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The US market continues to feel the fall-out from the failure of the AT&T/T-Mobile merger and the likely end of LightSquared's hopes. Satellite firm Dish Network could be the beneficiary of both. It could offer its own plans for an LTE network in mobile satellite bands, as an alternative to LightSquared's, and could either acquire TMo itself or - as some analysts now think - could command a huge price to be bought by AT&T.

AT&T is so desperate for new spectrum, to support LTE expansion after 2014, that it could pay "the highest premium in a decade" for Dish, believe analysts at Stifel Nicolaus. Assuming Verizon's multifaceted deals to buy spectrum from cablecos and Leap are approved, AT&T's options will be limited until the US holds new auctions. TMo would have boosted AT&T's LTE capacity by over 60%, according to the research note, but Dish would at least bring between two and four more years of 4G expansion. But the cellco would have to pay a high price - Wall Street observers think $50 a share would be reasonable, even though that would represent a 77% premium, the highest in a US telecoms purchase over $5bn since 2000, according to Bloomberg.

Dish CEO Joseph Clayton hardly dampened rising speculation when he told Bloomberg last week that "we're open to all possible options ... We could be acquired or we could be the acquirer."

Also seeing some of its 4G plans in disarray is Sprint, which will lose a spectrum partner and network hosting customer, should LightSquared's plan be vetoed because of GPS interference issues. This could push the third cellco back into the arms of its WiMAX joint venture, Clearwire, which has been relegated to a supporting role in Sprint's 4G strategy despite its plentiful swathes of spectrum. Whether or not the two firms intensify the multiyear - but limited - deal they announced last year, it will require a rapid change in the foundations on which Clearwire built its original model.

For one thing, its main wholesale customers apart from Sprint were the cablecos Cox, Comcast and BrightHouse Networks. The first two have now thrown their lot in with Verizon's LTE platform, while BrightHouse has just announced that it will adopt a Wi-Fi route for its wireless strategy, emulating CableVision. It will work with carrier Wi-Fi provider BelAir Networks.

Clearwire will look to compensate for the loss of the cable trio by moving quickly to the more mainstream LTE, and possibly picking up some LightSquared partners (of which it has 33, including Leap Wireless and Best Buy). Sprint has actually seen some of its best ARPU and lowest churn on the WiMAX-based 4G service, but it cannot move away from the technology quickly enough now. It announced its first three LTE devices at last week's

Consumer Electronics Show, promising to turn on its first homegrown LTE services later in the year - but it also said it would not release any more WiMAX products, though it did show a multimode WiMAX/LTE personal hotspot from Sierra Wireless. The switch-off date for the WiMAX services is 2015, but customers are likely to see the supply of interesting devices drying up well before that.

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