NextWave Wireless Explores Sale of U.S. Spectrum Holdings

Chip and equipment manufacturer plans garage sale of AWS, WCS, EBS, and BRS licenses.

As the U.S. weather improves and the spring season overtakes winter, it is "spring cleaning" time. NextWave Wireless jumped at the favorable weather by announcing that it has retained Deutsche Bank and UBS Investment Bank to explore the sale of its spectrum holdings in the United States. The company says its U.S. spectrum footprint covers over 251 million people, or pops, and includes major markets such as New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, Boston, Philadelphia, Denver, Houston, and Detroit.

"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.

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.

If this were a classified ad in the local newspaper announcing an upcoming garage sale, what could you expect to find at the NextWave sale?

                                AWS           WCS     EBS/BRS   Total

Frequency Band           1.7 GHz / 2.1 GHz  2.3 GHz   2.5 GHz

Licensed Pops (millions)       62.2          209.8     34.4     251.0

MHz-Pops (millions)            946.8        2,807.2    972.3   4,726.3

Number of Licenses              154           30        22       206

Number of Leases                 0             0        17       17

NextWave cautions that there is no assurance that the sale of any NextWave licenses will occur, and any such sales will be subject to final approval by the FCC.


By Jeff Orr

ORR Technology, LLC
 

Friday, April 25, 2008 in Business  | Permalink |  Comments (1)