LightSquared Files For Bankruptcy 138
fallen1 writes "Wireless broadband company LightSquared has filed for bankruptcy. In filings with U.S. Bankruptcy court, it was revealed that LightSquared had assets and debts of over $1 billion each. The decision followed a year-long fight between LightSqaured and GPS users — including some heavyweights like FedEx and UPS. Apparently Boeing and Alcatel-Lucent are heavily invested, but it would be interesting to see what the old Bell Labs could do with the technology."
Nothing to see here... (Score:5, Informative)
Dear Soulskill (Score:3, Informative)
If I can spot a major typo in the summary 2 seconds after seeing it for the first time ("Litesqaured" in this case) the you are not doing your fucking job.
Re:I've heard the government wanted failure (Score:4, Informative)
It's all conspiracy bullshit. Their engineers had to know it was going to cause serious interference, and had to know that neither the FCC specifically, nor the US Government in general would ever let anyone trash GPS. It was an idiotic idea from the get-go, and now the company goes down the crapper for it.
Re:Dear Soulskill (Score:4, Informative)
They are not moderators, they are not editors, all they do is choose which stories to post, do not expect anything beyond that from them.
Yes, they are listed as Editors, but I think that is just that there isn't really a good word for what little they do.
Re:It's a shame this couldn't be mutually resolved (Score:5, Informative)
Did you miss the part in TFA where it explained that "LightSquared invested $4 billion in airwaves"? 4 Billion is still a lot of money, at least where I come from. I suppose for a nationwide network it probably pales in comparison to what AT&T or Verizon hold, but it is still a substantial investment. I wonder if the FCC will give them a refund on all those unused EM rays?
Oh sure, 4$ billion is a lot of money. Problem here is Verizon, AT&T, Sprint etc spent even more for spectrum space allotted for high power use and Light Squared was trying to buy cheap spectrum and then get the rules changed. There was no way they could afford spectrum allotted for this kind of use and make their business model work. The licenses they have purchased can be sold to pay their creditors, but I don't think the FCC is going to give them a refund.
Bye Bye Light Squared...
Re:It's a shame this couldn't be mutually resolved (Score:4, Informative)
>Last I looked, (a week ago, but hey, maybe it's changed in the last 7 days) surveyors used transits and lasers, not GPS
You would be wrong.
Surveyors were using GPS before the "fuzzing" and after the fuzzing, surveyors were using Differential GPS (google this). Because the fuzzing was in one magnitude and direction it was trivial to correct for. Set up on a known point, correct for it, bam, your GPS now works like it did before the fuzzing.
Now that the charade of fuzzing is over, everybody uses GPS. Everyone. Especially now.
What you are also ignoring is the fact that the longer an antenna is left in one position and more satellites fly over, you get better and better resolution. Swinging a machete and cutting line takes time and costs money. If you can get a location by setting up on a point and gathering data for half a day instead of cutting line and running a traverse to get to it for two days, then you've come out way ahead.
The ultimate goal of land surveying is to be able to reconstruct a piece of land and who owns it even if it is vaporized by a nuclear explosion. GPS gives you this cheaply.
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BMO
Re:What technology? (Score:4, Informative)
It was allocated for satellite communications. They wanted to use it for terrestrial communications. The FCC didn't think that would work, so they gave them a provisional license so they could demonstrate that it would not interfere. They failed.