Sprint Nextel Corp and LightSquared Inc. are joining forces to provided Sprint users with a better high-speed wireless experience. Philip Falcone (owner of LightSquared Inc.) announced to his investors that the companies were discussing a $20 billion deal. For Falcone, this deal is very important. He is basically gambling 60% of his trust fund on this project. But if this pays off like Falcone is expecting, it will have been worth the risk. Investors are excited about the deal with sprint. They were quoted, “It’s a step in the right direction given all the uncertainty around this investment.”
Investors are referring to the challenge that Falcone laid out regarding Verizon Wireless and ATT about networks and rivaling their wireless networks.
The plan is that Sprint and LightSquared will jointly develop the 4G LTE network. Obviously since Sprint is helping to develop the network they are going to be the main customer of the 4G LTE network.
For Sprint this is a BIG deal. If they are able to build up this 4G LTE network, then Sprint, who is currently the third largest US wireless company, will be even better suited to keep up/surpass ATT. The hope with this merger with LightSquared is that it will lessen the load on Sprints current data servers. Many sprint customers may be finding their data running a bit slower than they like (something most of us can relate too) this is due to the high volume of data usage on the Sprint Network. Which is most likely due to Sprints Unlimited Data plans (which in the humble opinion of this writer is freaking sweet and is something that carriers like ATT should really look in to)
There is still some work to be done both by Sprint and by LightSquared Inc. For instance, there is a study due to release around July 1 about whether or not this new system would interfere with global-positioning systems. But if they can iron out the issues, this could mean much better network speeds for Sprint users.
Source: Fiercewireless