NextWave Wireless Puts its US Radio Spectrum Up for Sale
NextWave Wireless has retained Deutsche Bank and UBS Investment Bank to explore the sale of its radio spectrum holdings in the United States. NextWave’s U.S. spectrum footprint covers over 251 million people, or pops, in the United States and includes major markets such as New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, Boston, Philadelphia, Denver, Houston, and Detroit.
The company’s holdings include licenses and lease rights for a total of 4.7 billion MHz/pops of spectrum comprised of 154 Advanced Wireless Service (AWS) licenses in the 1.7/2.1 GHz band, 30 Wireless Communication Service (WCS) licenses in the 2.3 GHz band, and 39 Educational Broadband Service (EBS) and Broadband Radio Service (BRS) licenses and spectrum leases in the 2.5 GHz band.
“Since the completion of the recent 700 MHz auction, we have received multiple offers for our U.S. spectrum assets. Given our continued success in developing highly differentiated wireless broadband and multimedia-enabled products, we no longer view our spectrum holdings as critical to reaching our product sales objectives, and believe that now is the perfect time for us to sell these valuable assets while network operators are trying to finalize their band plans and spectrum holdings for their continuing 3G and planned 4G rollouts,” said Allen Salmasi, chief executive officer and president of NextWave Wireless.
Edward Dunn, a Managing Director with the Media & Telecom Group at Deutsche Bank said that “we view NextWave’s AWS spectrum as highly complementary to other AWS spectrum holders, especially mobile operators who are now in the process of deploying networks in this band. In addition, since many WiMAX and LTE networks are planned to be deployed in the 2.3 GHz and 2.5 GHz – 2.7 GHz bands globally, we believe that the company’s New York EBS/BRS spectrum represents one of the more valuable markets in the 2.5 GHz band while their extensive WCS footprint should attract interest from both national and regional mobile operators"
Any sales will be subject to final approval by the Federal Communications Commission.
NextWave's portfolio of licensed spectrum holdings includes nationwide spectrum in the U.S., Canada, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Croatia, Czech Republic and Slovakia.
Posted to the site on 24th April 2008
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