{"id":49910,"date":"2025-01-06T21:29:17","date_gmt":"2025-01-06T13:29:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/ligado-files-for-chapter-11-makes-deal-with-ast-spacemobile-for-mss-spectrum\/"},"modified":"2025-01-06T21:29:17","modified_gmt":"2025-01-06T13:29:17","slug":"ligado-files-for-chapter-11-makes-deal-with-ast-spacemobile-for-mss-spectrum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/ligado-files-for-chapter-11-makes-deal-with-ast-spacemobile-for-mss-spectrum\/","title":{"rendered":"Ligado Files for Chapter 11, Makes Deal with AST SpaceMobile for MSS Spectrum"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n

Ligado Networks <\/b>has filed for Chapter 11 restructuring, and has signed a deal with AST SpaceMobile<\/strong> to allow the company to use Ligado\u2019s mid-band spectrum. <\/p>\n

Ligado announced the bankruptcy filing on Jan. 6, saying in a statement it incurred \u201clarge operational losses\u201d from the U.S. government\u2019s \u201cunlawful taking\u201d of its spectrum rights without compensation. In 2023, Ligado sued the U.S. government, alleging the Department of Defense, Department of Commerce, Congress prevented Ligado from using spectrum licensed by the FCC. <\/p>\n

Ligado also has debt to Inmarsat, now part of Viasat. Ligado said it has gone through a years-long effort to restructure its payment obligations with Viasat. <\/p>\n

In total, Ligado said it has $8.6 billion in debt and expects the Chapter 11 process will reduce its debt to approximately $1.2 billion.<\/p>\n

Ligado said it will continue to provide mobile satellite services (MSS) to its existing customers. The company plans to continue advancing its mobile satellite plans and L-band ecosystem for its spectrum assets. <\/p>\n

The company also plans to continue its lawsuit against the U.S. government during the restructuring process. Ligado reported that on Nov. 18, 2024, the U.S. Court of Federal Claims denied in part the government\u2019s motion to dismiss Ligado\u2019s claims.<\/p>\n

\u201cLigado will continue to vigorously prosecute its litigation against the U.S. government to enforce its constitutional right to just compensation for the government\u2019s unlawful taking of Ligado\u2019s licensed L-Band spectrum,\u201d said Ligado President and CEO Doug Smith. \u201cThe DOD\u2019s actions constitute the largest uncompensated taking of private property in the U.S. in modern times and have caused Ligado catastrophic financial distress.\u201d<\/p>\n

Spectrum Deal With AST SpaceMobile <\/b><\/h3>\n

The commercial agreement with AST SpaceMobile is a significant part of the restructuring and Ligado\u2019s financial plan moving forward. According to AST SpaceMobile, Ligado will receive AST SpaceMobile warrants and a $550 million payment, then approximately $80 million annually for spectrum usage rights. <\/p>\n

This gives AST SpaceMobile long-term spectrum usage rights for more than 80 years for up to 40 MHz of Ligado\u2019s L-band mobile satellite spectrum (MSS) spectrum in the United States and Canada, plus access to an additional 5 MHz in the 1670-1675 MHz Band in the United States. <\/p>\n

\u201cAdding premium lower mid-band spectrum access in the United States to the AST SpaceMobile network gives us long-term access to a large block of a scarce resource, significantly enhancing our planned space-based cellular broadband offering,\u201d said Abel Avellan, Chairman and CEO at AST SpaceMobile. <\/p>\n

The deal includes revenue sharing rights for Ligado in AST SpaceMobile\u2019s direct-to-device business in the U.S. and Canada.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe hosting of Ligado\u2019s L-band spectrum on AST SpaceMobile\u2019s advanced low earth satellite network is a sea change with the potential to materially accelerate and expand consumers\u2019 access to space-based broadband,\u201d Ligado said in a statement. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ligado Networks has filed for Chapter 11 restructuring, and has signed a deal with AST SpaceMobile to allow the company to use Ligado\u2019s mid-band spectrum.  Ligado announced the bankruptcy filing on Jan. 6, saying in a statement it incurred \u201clarge operational losses\u201d from the U.S. government\u2019s \u201cunlawful taking\u201d of its spectrum rights without compensation. In […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":47341,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-49910","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49910"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49910"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49910\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47341"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49910"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49910"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49910"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}