Motient Moving Forward With Hybrid Satellite-Terrestrial Broadband Network
Thought Motient was dead? Maybe not… The company is looking alive again, now that the FCC has given the go ahead for a company called Mobile Satellite Ventures to build a hybrid satellite-terrestrial wireless broadband network using L-band spectrum and permission to build 18,000 towers. Motient owns a large chunk of MSV, and seems to be betting on that as its next move. Of course, there are still a ton of challenges facing the deployment of such a network, so it’s a bit early to really say that they’re in good shape, despite quotes in the article suggesting that the value of their investment has grown by more than 10x already. Derek adds: Motient has been trying to build the largest national data network through enabling roaming among various heterogeneous networks. A satellite overlay covering the whole country would allow then to guarantee coast to coast coverage, and they would roam subscribers to cheaper terrestrial networks when within range. This would make Motient a strong competitor for telematics, mobile enterprise data services, and even Blackberry-type email for customers that demand delivery of data, no matter where they are.
