NextWave Wireless has decided that business is good enough for its TV and semiconductor technologies that it no longer needs the spectrum it acquired several years ago.
NextWave Wireless has spectrum in three bands – 1.7 GHz, 2.3 GHz and 2.5 GHz – that it says covers 251 million people in many major U.S. markets. It has retained Deutsche Bank and UBS Investment Bank to help it sell the spectrum.
CEO Allen Salmasi says NextWave has received several unsolicited offers for its U.S. spectrum assets since the conclusion of the recent 700 MHz auction. That auction raised almost $20 billion.
Roy Berger, executive vice president of corporate communications, says NextWave never wanted to become an operator by using the spectrum for itself. He says the company wanted to package the spectrum with some of its products, which include WiMAX and RF chipsets, multiband td-CDMA, WiMAX and LTE base station platforms and its MXtv and TDtv mobile TV systems.
NextWave’s Holdings
|
| |
AWS
|
WCS
|
EBS/BRS
|
| Frequency Band |
1.7 GHz / 2.1 GHz |
2.3 GHz |
2.5 GHz |
| Licensed Pops (millions) |
62.2 |
209.8 |
34.4 |
| MHz-Pops (millions) |
946.8 |
2,807.2 |
972.3 |
| Number of Licenses |
154 |
30 |
22 |
| Number of Leases |
0 |
0 |
17 |
Now, Berger says, those products have created enough positive interest on their own that NextWave no longer sees the need to package the spectrum with them. He didn’t say how such a package might have worked, only that there were multiple ways of doing it.
Once the 700 MHz auction was over, Berger says NextWave started receiving calls from unspecified prospective buyers. He says NextWave believes its spectrum in the higher frequencies might be of interest to operators “or new entrants” that might want to pair 700 MHz with the higher spectrum. The 700 MHz spectrum is great for propagation while the higher bands are great for capacity, he says.
NextWave also owned spectrum in Europe and South America but Berger says the company has no plans to sell those holdings.
Apple Acquires Chipmaker P.A. Semi
By Teresa von Fuchs
Apple announced it has acquired chipmaker P.A. Semi, known for designing low-power chips. Apple did not reveal the price or specifics of the purchase, but reports estimate the value of the deal to be around $278 million.
Analysts expect that the acquisition was not a sign that Apple is looking to enter the microprocessor market, and instead centered on research and design teams.
The Wall Street Journal quoted Apple CEO Steve Jobs as saying the acquisition had “everything to do with their talent” and only in some cases P.A. Semi’s technology. He added that to run the kinds of “sophisticated” software Apple runs on devices such as the iPod and iPhone, “you can't just go out and buy the chips off the shelf to do that.”
With only 150 employees, P.A. Semi makes chips based on the Power architecture from IBM, a platform Apple has abandoned for Intel. But P.A. Semi’s chips have been lauded for their efficiency. The company’s PWRficient processor is a dual core running at 2 GHz, that it says consumes a third or even a quarter of the power of comparable chips available on the market.
Analysts also have speculated that this deal could be aimed at new devices in the works at Apple.