Earlier this week the Minneapolis Star Tribune wrote about LightSquared Wireless and since then I’ve had several people ask me about them. I wrote last fall about their plans to come to here. I don’t know a lot more but thought I’d share what I was able to find out.

Steve Alexander provides a nice description of LightSquared’s technology plans…

The network would combine two communications satellites and 40,000 earthbound antennas to cover 92 percent of the nation’s land area by the end of 2015. That’s more land coverage than any other wireless provider offers consumers. But the quality wouldn’t be uniform — the antennas would provide fast 4G data speeds in cities, while the satellites would deliver slower speeds in rural areas.

My first frustration is the two-tiered service for urban/rural customers – but it is in alignment with the National Broadband Plan so I won’t belabor my issues here. Also there seem to be bigger concerns about the technology, as Inside GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite Systems) indicates…

In January, however, the FCC’s International Bureau, acting under “delegated authority” and after an abbreviated public notice process, granted an exclusive waiver to LightSquared to build a dense nationwide network — up to 40,000 stations — of high-powered ATC transmitters.

The coalition and many GPS manufacturers and users believe that the 1,500-watt power of the LightSquared signal — a billion times stronger than GPS — will saturate the RF front-ends of receivers, causing them to fail.

Apparently there are several independent tests being conducting to assess the validity of those concerns. Results are expected by the end of May.

There are also questions in terms of the business plan (as described by the Minneapolis Star Tribune)…

LightSquared’s business model is just as unorthodox. It would be the nation’s first exclusively wholesale wireless network, selling to retailers such as Best Buy. The retailers could then compete with traditional cell providers Verizon Wireless, Sprint and AT&T.

The concern is the expense of building such a large network from scratch. Can this business withstand the setup costs. Also time is not on their side. As Urgent Communications (trade journal of the International Wireless Communication Expo) reports…

But the FCC also is under pressure to find more spectrum to feed the explosive demand of mobile broadband services, and it wants to see more broadband deployed. LightSquared has a tight rollout deadline. As a condition of its waiver, the operator must cover 100 million people by the end of 2012, 145 million people by the end of 2013 and at least 260 million people by the end of 2015.

So right now it seems as if some things are up in the air. Almost every article I read talks about the gamble that LightSquared is taking and credits/blames the Minnesota-born financial backer Philip Falcone…

The hedge fund manager who made billions betting against subprime mortgages is engaging in another high-risk wager: that his telecommunications company LightSquared will be able to launch a next-generation U.S. wireless network.