The company that is spending billions to build a business invisible to consumers wants a consumer products heavyweight in its corner. LightSquared has chosen Japan’s Sharp Corporation to make smartphones and tablets to operate on its 4G-LTE network. LighSquared says it wants to leverage Sharp’s expertise in cutting-edge consumer components like advanced LCD panels and high-end camera modules. LightSquared wants to offer the products to wireless carriers and retailers. The company will showcase the first new products next week at CTIA Enterprise & Applications in San Diego.
“Sharp has a rich history of producing unique products that push the extremes of design and functionality, and we’re proud that they will be developing innovative devices for LightSquared’s 4G-LTE network,” said Sanjiv Ahuja, chief executive officer of LightSquared. “LightSquared’s wholesale-only business model and open network will provide Sharp with a platform from which they can aggressively expand into the U.S. wireless market with an exciting portfolio of smartphones and tablets.”
LightSquared is building a wholesale-only nationwide 4G-LTE network integrated with satellite coverage, and planning to resell it to US wireless carriers. With this alliance it could give carriers an added incentive to become its customers in order to offer the Sharp products that will work on LightSquared’s network. Sharp smartphones are currently sold at AT&T retail stores. Since Sharp sells a wide range of consumer products, it also has relationships with a number of other US retailers who are not yet offering wireless products.
Early this year, the US government agreed to let LighSquared use spectrum in the MSS (Mobile Satellite Service) band for its network, provided the company could first resolve potential interference with GPS (Global Positioning System) navigation systems that use nearby spectrum. The upper band allocated to LightSquared sits right beside the band used by GPS, and the lower band is sometimes used by satellite services that enhance GPS signals. Initial tests in the upper band found massive interference with GPS so LightSquared has said that for now it will focus on the lower band frequencies.
