On 6/5/11 3:28 AM, Will Matney wrote:

WHat are the odds that Light squared is a clever gambit to make money by
shorting the stock (or equivalent, I know L2 is privately held).
Propose something that looks sexy and meets a national need (universal
wireless broadband, solving the last mile!)...
Get tons o' bucks into the firm because it's gonna be great guys, let's
all ride it together.
(buy fancy car, get paid big salary and bonus)
Oh.. a regulatory hitch?
No problem, we're better than sliced bread, keep sending that money,
let's make all the co-marketing deals with stock swaps, get that land
for our stations optioned and tied up.

Oops, there are laws of physics and a crowd with flaming torches and
pitchforks after us.
Well, we gave it our best shot...thanks for the support, and, no, you
don't get your money back.

L2 looks good to people who don't know enough of the details.  Don't
forget that these investors are people who also invest in Shannon Law
violating communications schemes (yes, because we've got a secret
special coding technique, we can send 10 bits/second/Hz at -10dB SNR..
it's going to revolutionize wireless broadband, the government is going
to spend billions, get in now, while you can)

BPL was much the same.

Someone in the industry said that it makes so little sense that there
must be some other way for it (the proposal, not the technology) to work.

The shorting financially is one way and the prime investor in L^2 is a
major hedge fund. The other possibility I heard proposed by my friend is
that at the last minute there will be a compromise to let them move to a
different portion of the spectrum than the idiotic plan. The gain for
L^2 would be that they get the spectrum handed to them that would have
cost big $ if they had started negotiating for at the beginning.

Anyone want to bet against either a big financial gain based on shorting
or something like CDS when the deal melts down, or a big bait and switch
at the last minute that saves GPS with a big giveaway?

On 6/5/2011 6:53 AM, Jim Lux wrote:

That's an interesting idea Jim.

What if the re-aggregating Ma Bell is about to
swallow T-Mobile in order to attempt control
of the mobile phone market.  Ma needs to be
careful to not awaken the monopoly regulators.

Ah, Ma can point to new LightSquared as being a
competitor.  Then, after acquiring T-Mobil, it
is discovered that LightSquared is a technical
disaster and must fold.  She could even have
started LS and write off the cost of the LS
losses; she has a large amount of money.

Of course this fantasy would require a lot of
secret, back-room deals.

On 06/05/2011 09:53 AM, Jim Lux wrote: