Things are continuing to flow smoothly for the upstart wholesale LTE/satellite network operation LightSquared, which blasted its satellite into orbit yesterday. By Ian Scales.
Like a blast from the distant past, the world's news agencies are relaying reports from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kasakhstan to the effect that a Russian Proton-M rocket last night launched "as anticipated" a communications satellite for the American telecoms company, LightSquared. The Baikonur Cosmodrome was the point of departure in the early 1960s for the Russian space programme.
It's the tenth launch this year and the satellite will be placed into orbit so as to cover the US mainland, the Carribean and Hawaii.
So it's also a big day for LightSquared which seems to be moving forward at a steady clip.
Since announcing its technologies and business plan earlier this year, the private company has placed contracts to build and maintain the network and has announced infrastructure and handset partners - it seems like an extraordinary rate of development.
In July it let the largest ever network outsourcing contract with Nokia Siemens Networks at US$7.0 billion and more recently it announced that Qualcomm, AnyDATA and BandRich were developing technology for device vendors.
Now with the satellite in orbit LightSquared really does seem to have taken off. Whether it will end up having a major impact on the US mobile broadband market, or will crash back down to earth, is another question.
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