South Korean operator SK Telecom, who used to have a presence in the United States back when the Helio brand still existed, has confirmed to Reuters that they’re in talks with Harbinger Capital Partners to possibly invest in their upcoming LTE network known today as “LightSquared“. Philip Falcone, the head of Harbinger, is looking to pull a Clearwire and offer an LTE network that will be sold to businesses who in turn resell it to consumers directly. Harbringer already signed a 7 year deal with Nokia Siemens Networks to deploy and manage the LTE network, now all Philip has to do is cough up the dough to pay for it.
Both AT&T and Verizon disapprove of the provisions agreed upon between Harbringer and the FCC because it states the leading two wireless operators in the USA can not use LightSquared unless they get direct approval from the government. It’s a bit heavy handed for the government to apply such stringent rules, but America needs a viable alternative to the duopoly that has dominated the landscape since mobile broadband became popular only a few short years ago.
Verizon is due to turn on their LTE network by the end of this year and they’ll cover 30 major cities or around 100 million people. AT&T says they’re going to launch LTE by the middle of 2011 and that they’ll only be able to cover 75 million people. Then there’s T-Mobile, who is betting on HSPA+, which today is currently pumping out 21 Mbps, but in the future will be doing 42 Mbps, to deliver “4G speeds” to their customers. Their first HSPA+ capable device is the G2, which has a theoretical top speed of 14.4 Mbps.
This is an exciting time for infrastructure businesses who have been struggling due to a brutal price war that has taken place over the past few years. Now that operators actually have a valid reason to upgrade their networks, the booming explosion of data, then we’re going to start seeing high speed low latency cover the entire country.
Bring it.
[Via: mocoNews]