LightSquared LTE plans are gaining momentum

With the recent inflow of $850 million debt, LightSquared announced vendor partners who will provide network, chip and devices for its ambitious wholesale LTE launch . The overall LTE network will be constructed, operated and maintained by Nokia Siemens Networks. This is a huge deal for NSN. The total budget to build, operate and maintain is around $7-8 billion dollars. The overall network will consist of 40,000 base stations and cover 92 percent of the US population by 2015.

The Chipset and devices will be provided by Qualcomm and Nokia Corp respectively. With CDMA almost nearing its death, Qualcomm must be betting big on LTE chipsets. Most of the folks still don’t believe this is gone happen, and feel it’s just hogwash and will never see the light of the day. Iam cautious in my opinion. It’s an ambitious plan. Building a network from scratch is not a trivial task. For now, I will just say Kudos to the team and wish they succeed.