A $10,000 gigabyte: Why we shouldn’t mourn for LightSquared

[Commentary] LightSquared may have seemed to be a beacon of hope for rural broadband, but after looking at the details of the plan, rural America will be better off without the service the company planned to offer. The service was to be a hybrid of terrestrial tower broadband and satcomm for areas where towers were not going to be profitable (i.e. many rural areas). And what would that satellite communications service have looked like for rural areas? Not much capacity for rural areas dreaming of booming businesses in the cloud.

[Schrock is a technology writer focusing on geospatial sciences, and an editor with Professional Surveyor Magazine]