In a move that should surprise no one, Philip Falcone’s LightSquared, the troubled wireless network, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in New York. LightSquared, despite hooking up with Sprint to provide spectrum for the Now Network’s LTE network, has never been able to convince the folks at the FCC that their network would not interfere with GPS signals, even going as far as to claim that tests performed by outside sources were falsified. Back in March, Sprint cut its ties with Lightsquared, in what would have been a 15-year deal and seen Sprint’s network bolstered by speedy LTE, instead, Sprint has decided to overhaul its existing network, decommission its iDEN network and work with ClearWire, in which they already own a sizable stake.
Currently, LightSquared has about $1.6 billion in debt and with no conceivable way to pay that back, the overall outcome of this failure should be interesting to see. Either way, Falcone’s going to have some ‘splainin’ to do.
Source: Bloomberg