US telco Leap Wireless hires advisors for potential sale
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley have been hired by US cellco Leap Wireless to advise the operator on a sale as it looks for potential suitors. A number of potential buyers like MetroPCS, Verizon, and AT&T have been approached by Leap in the recent days.
MetroPCS made a USD5.5 billion all-stock takeover offer for Leap in early September 2007, offering 2.75 of its own shares for every Leap share. However, Leap rejected the offer in mid-September, citing that it undervalued the company.
Leap Wireless seeks merger or buyers (USA)
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: USA based Leap Wireless has hired advisers and formed a special board committee to take a decision on the future of the company which might be a merger or a sale out.
Earlier, it was reported that MetroPCS and Leap could seek a merger to be better placed to compete with the big-four networks.
However, an all-stock offer from MetroPCS, which valued the company at US$5.5 billion, was rejected by Leap Wireless in late 2007. Since then the company valuation is estimated to have plunged by around three quarters.
Bridgewater and MetroPCS sign multimillion dollar contract
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: In a multimillion dollar contract, Bridgewater Systems will provide both the Home Subscriber Server and the Policy Controller to 4G LTE network of MetroPCS to be launched in the second half of 2010.
Bridgewater will be deployed as a repository for subscriber and device profile and state information and to manage subscriber identities, authentication, authorization, service profiles, and quality of service in real time.
Besides, MetroPCS, a provider of flat-rate, prepay mobile services will also use Bridgewater’s Policy Controller to perform the policy charging rule function (PCRF) compliant with 3GPP Release 8.
Bridgewater’s full compliance with 3GPP Release 8, feature functionality and its current deployment of Service Controller for authentication, authorization and accounting in MetroPCS’ 1xRTT network helped it to win the competitive bidding process.
According to Joanne Sternberg, director of marketing communications at Bridgewater, the contract is significant for the company as its first major LTE deployment and that Bridgewater has more trials currently underway in Asia Pac, North America and the CALA regions.
T-Mobile Keeps Wireless Auction Lead
After more than three weeks of bidding, Deutsche Telekom‘s T-Mobile, the fourth-largest U.S. cellular carrier, continues to have placed the biggest bet at the Federal Communications Commission’s wireless spectrum auction. T-Mobile has pledged $4.2 billion so far, while total bids from all parties have reached $13.7 billion. Initial estimates suggested the federal government may eventually bring in $15 billion for its airwave auction.
Both established wireless carriers–such as the nation’s largest, Cingular Wireless–and other bidders–like SpectrumCo, a coalition of the largest U.S. cable TV providers and Sprint Nextel (nyse: S – news – people )–are trying to buy 1,122 airspace licenses that would allow them to add new voice and data services or increase existing coverage areas. Faster data networks are favored by both e-mail-addicted businessmen and ringtone-crazy high school students. Still, data service only accounts for about 10% of today’s wireless bills.
No surprises here yet: Established carriers represent much of the leaderboard. Verizon Wireless, a joint venture of Verizon Communications (nyse: VZ – news – people ) and Vodafone (nyse: VOD – news – people ), is second with $2.8 billion in bids. SpectrumCo, representing Comcast (nasdaq: CMCSA – news – people ), Time Warner‘s (nyse: TWX – news – people ) cable division, Cox Communications, Bright House and Sprint, is third, bidding $2.3 billion. Dallas-based regional carrier MetroPCS has $1.4 billion on the line for licenses covering the Northeast, Midwest and some Western states. And Cingular, owned by the merging AT&T (nyse: T – news – people ) and BellSouth (nyse: BLS – news – people ), rounds out the top five bidders with a $1.3 billion stake.
The FCC sped up the auction process this week, increasing the daily number of bidding rounds to six 30-minute sessions per day, up from four hour-long sessions. Most of the largest chunks of spectrum haven’t seen new bids in weeks. Verizon Wireless’ $1.3 billion bid for a slice of spectrum in the Northeast is the single largest bid. The second-largest single bid is a $894 million commitment from T-Mobile for a swath of airspace over the Western U.S.
In a note issued Thursday, Citigroup analyst Michael Rollins wrote that recent bidding activity could lead to increasing competition in urban markets, thank to carriers such as Leap Wireless and MetroPCS bidding on licenses that include several larger cities. Rollins also says greater spectrum buys from big, national carriers could also be a sign of more aggressive data network installations in urban markets. “Verizon is also actively bidding on urban spectrum, and is looking to build a larger spectrum position than we had previously anticipated,” he adds.
On Aug. 8, Sprint, already rich with spectrum after its merger with Nextel, announced plans for a nationwide “fourth-generation” data network, while most carriers (including Sprint and Verizon) are still putting finishing touches on third-gen networks (see: ” Sprint Boss Goes Next-Gen”).
While the current auction could still last a few more weeks, with bidding mostly on smaller, cheaper licenses, unsuccessful bidders need not fret: Another FCC auction, with 64 more wireless spectrum licenses, is scheduled to start Feb. 7, 2007. Winning bidders could use the spectrum for a range of services including wireless Internet or mobile voice and paging services.
Source- http://www.forbes.com
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