LightSquared has appointed Doug Smith as its new permanent CEO and Chairman of the Board. Prior to this, Smith acted as co-COO for the troubled company, after serving as chief network officer and handling LightSquared's network design, deployment, and operations. Earlier this year, former CEO Philip Falcone stepped down from his position just before the company filed for bankruptcy protection.

LightSquared had grandiose plans to deploy a terrestrial 4G LTE network on spectrum that was formerly allocation for satellite services. Unfortunately, it ran into significant opposition from the GPS industry, which claimed that LightSquared's propose …

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After what feels like an eternity of drama, a drawn-out fight with US regulators, a failed attempt to provide LTE to Sprint, and the planned exit of its CEO, LightSquared has finally bowed to the inevitable and filed for bankruptcy, reports Bloomberg. The move comes just over a month after the company declared that it was "seriously considering" filing, when CEO Philip Falcone said that the move would allow the company to gain more time to deal with its creditors.

LightSquared declared it had around $1 billion in assets and an equal amount in debt, reports Bloomberg, however Falcone's Harbinger Capital has poured over $3 billion into the co …

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LightSquared's CEO Philip Falcone will "eventually" step aside as the public face of the company, the Wall Street Journal reports. The move follows months of setbacks for the wireless broadband provider, and is being suggested as a concession that could allow the firm to renegotiate terms with its lenders and prevent it from entering bankruptcy. However, the WSJ quotes a person close to the company as saying that a final agreement may not be reached, and it was still possible that the company would be forced to default on its debts.

As part of the agreement, Falcone would not be able to act as an officer of the firm, and would eventually st …

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Struggling company LightSquared has bought itself two more years to try to launch its 4G LTE network. Today, LightSquared announced that it had reached a deal with satellite provider Inmarsat that would let it delay its payments until after March 31st, 2014. The company paid off an outstanding debt of $56.25 million to Inmarsat, but it won't need to make the $29.6 million payment that was due late last month.

LightSquared interim CEO Doug Smith said that this amended agreement "allows LightSquared an opportunity to focus its efforts on obtaining the necessary regulatory approvals" for its new network, which was shot down by the FCC because …

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Things have been looking grim for LightSquared since its ambitions to build a new LTE network were thwarted by the FCC, and now the hedge fund manager behind the company says he is considering a voluntary bankruptcy. "There are arguments that we would be better off in bankruptcy than not," Philip Falcone said, according to Bloomberg. "LightSquared, if I have to, I'll put it into bankruptcy. I don't care." He continued to say that a bankruptcy would provide the company time to deal with its creditors, and would not necessarily be disastrous for LightSquared's investors as the spectrum it owns still has value unto itself. Whatever the move, it …

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As The Wall Street Journal had reported last night, Sprint has announced today that it'll be formally terminating its agreement to partner with LightSquared on an LTE deployment in the controversial 1600MHz band. Of course, LightSquared had never intended for its 1600MHz holdings to be controversial - the controversy was brought to it when nagging concerns over interference with GPS couldn't be solved to the FCC's satisfaction, effectively ending the company's aspiration for deploying a nationwide commercial network. Pursuant to the termination, Sprint is returning $65 million in cash to LightSquared and leaves a faint glimmer of hope: "We r …

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The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Sprint will officially announce Friday that it's terminating its planned 15-year agreement with LightSquared for LTE service, leaving the wireless wholesaler without a major partner for its 4G network - a network rendered all but dead by the FCC's ruling that it couldn't be built over GPS interference concerns. Needless to say, the official termination comes as no surprise, and it's something that Sprint has hinted it would do in recent weeks.

LightSquared's 1600MHz network had originally factored prominently into Sprint's LTE deployment strategy over the next couple years, but it's not like the car …

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