Open Range Communications will lay-off most employees and cease accepting new customers. Though the company will continue to service its existing customer base of about 20,000 subscribers, the CEO, Bill Beans, has resigned. The company will reduce its headcount by 122, leaving fewer than 50 employees to run the remainder of the company.
Open Range provides WiMax data services in and around the Denver area. Open Range in March inked a deal with LightSquared whereby it plans to transition its operations from the spectrum it leases from Globalstar to LightSquared’s planned LTE network. However, LightSquared’s network rollout has been hampered by concerns regarding how its planned network could interfere with GPS receivers.
Open Range Communications was approved in 2009 for a loan by the United States Department of Agriculture’s Rural Development Utilities Program (RDUP) to deliver High Speed Wireless Internet to 525 rural communities across 17 states. This Broadband Access Loan of $267 million loan (the largest in USDA history) was made possible through the combined efforts of the RUS, FCC and Members of the House of Representatives and United States Senate.