The San Diego, California-based company is paying $13.3m cash up front and up to $25.7m in stock, based on the achievement of operational milestones in the 18 months after the closing of the acquisition.
CEO Allen Salmasi said GO Networks’ Wi-Fi technology complements the company’s WiMAX product line and will help it to deliver wide-area and local-area wireless broadband services using standalone or integrated Wi-Fi/WiMAX systems that use both licensed and free spectrum.
Though based in Mountain View, California, Go Networks’ R&D is based in Tel Aviv, Israel. It claims its xRF technology, an adaptive beamforming antenna engine, and a multi-frequency mesh architecture, make it suitable for metropolitan networks.
With $222.2m in cash and equivalents, NextWave is not short of firepower for acquisitions and currently generates most of its revenue from its $46.6m acquisition in 2005 of streaming media software vendor PacketVideo Corp.
While at an early stage of developing a suite of WiMAX products, NextWave boasts a spectrum footprint across the US covering a population of 206 million people, that includes nine of the top 10 and 15 of the top 20 markets which have population densities and demographics most suitable to wireless broadband in the US.
It plans to partner with service providers to build and operate shared mobile WiMAX networks that operate on its licensed spectrum.
