Posts tagged wimax
Motorola buys BitBand
Nov 29th
Motorola buys CDN specialist BitBand
Motorola is buying BitBand, a VOD company that claims more than 60 commercial IPTV deployments worldwide.
Motorola did not say how much it is paying for the privately held company. Multiple news sources peg the price at $10 million to $15 million. Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that the half-dozen venture companies backing the company had sunk $18 million into it.
BitBand concentrates on content delivery networks (CDNs) and ensuring quality of experience (QoE) for both on-demand services and broadcast over IP networks . The company says its solutions are optimized for hybrid and distributed network architectures.
The acquisition is in keeping with previous Motorola acquisitions in the on-demand space such as Netopia in 2008 and Broadbus in 2006.
Motorola said BitBand will complement its on-demand product line, which includes the Adaptive Media Management framework for content management and high-performance streaming servers for centralized and edge-based on-demand networks. With the addition of BitBand’s products, Motorola said it can offer comprehensive on-demand solutions for customers worldwide, addressing a wide range of deployment scales, access networks, video formats and business models.
BitBand has focused largely on the international telco market. Among its customers are Tele2 (Holland), Fastweb (Italy) and Swyazinvest (Russia).
Sprint to put $1.176 billion into Clearwire for WiMax expansion
Nov 25th
Sprint Nextel on Tuesday agreed to pump $1.176 billion into Clearwire Corp., the public company building out the fourth-generation WiMax wireless network that Sprint is counting on to boost its own business.
Sprint’s partners in Clearwire, excluding Google Inc., will inject an additional $388 million to provide $1.564 billion for expanding the WiMax network. The money will start flowing Friday in a series of three installments, according to Clearwire’s public notice.
In the deal, Sprint’s 51.1 percent majority stake in Clearwire will grow to 56.6 percent.
Clearwire aims to reach more than 80 markets with more than 120 million people by the end of next year.
The investment came a day after Overland Park-based Sprint announced up to 2,500 layoffs systemwide, including an unspecified number here. The job cuts, to occur mostly by year-end, are expected to save the nation’s third-largest wireless company $350 million annually.
Shares in Sprint fell 19 cents to $3.24. Clearwire stock was up 45 cents to $7.25.
Clearwire on Tuesday also reported a quarterly loss of $82.4 million, or 43 cents a share, compared with a year-earlier loss of $72.7 million, or 45 cents a share. Revenue grew 13 percent to $68.8 million.
Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expected a loss of 43 cents on revenue of $67 million.
Subscriber count climbed 18 percent, to 555,000, as net additions surged to 44,000 from 8,000 a year earlier.
