As expected, Verizon Wireless completed its acquisition of Alltel from Atlantis Holdings LLC. Verizon paid $5.9 billion for the equity of Alltel, in the process picking up the latter’s $22.2 billion debt. According to a press release, Verizon’s network coverage will serve 290 million customers in the United States before conforming adjustments and after divestitures. Of course not all 290 million subscribe to Verizon. The transaction net the carrier 12.9 million new customers expanding its total user base to 83.7 million making the company the largest wireless provider in the United States.
Subscribe to GPSObsessed: Feed, Email
Related Points Of Interest
Garmin’s nuviphone has finally, finally, finally…passed through the FCC. While it’s nice to see that its release is a bit more tangible now, it seems my whole Sprint-Clearwire-now-Clear conspiracy theory that explained the 2008 delays was dead wrong. As GPSTracklog points out, the reference to Note 6 in the FCC picture below says:
“This 15.0 x 3.5 mm field to contain the AT&T SKU number”
Notice the AT&T mention in there. Guess it’ll be the official carrier.
Related Points Of Interest
Mobile Monday Boston, a local chapter of the global Mobile Monday community of wireless afficiondos, released a report today revealing that $565 million was invested in Boston-based mobile companies. According to the report, there are 24 types of mobile companies in Boston–including LBS–and 45 received investments in 2008. The numbers are impressive; despite the economic downturn that’s a 45 percent increase from 2007 including venture capital, initial public offerings and acquisitions.
uLocate Communications and Skyhook Wireless are both Boston-based companies I’ve covered extensively.
(Image Credit: Mobile Monday Boston)
Subscribe to GPSObsessed: Feed, Email
Related Points Of Interest
Cambridge, England-based CSR has purchased SiRF for the equivalent of $136 million. CSR is a maker of wireless chips and owns plenty of intellectual property related to Bluetooth, while San Jose-based SiRF is (or was) a global powerhouse in the GPS chip market.
According to the merger announcement, SiRF shareholders will receive 0.741 of a common share in CSR for each SiRF share. At the $136 million purchase price, this is a 91 percent premium to SiRF’s February 9 closing price of $1.08 and a premium of 57 percent to its three month average closing price. Once the deal closes, SiRF shareholders will own 27 percent of the merged group which will be a US-based CSR subsidiary.
There is no better time than now for SiRF to sell. The company had an awful time in 2008 amid falling chip prices initially, and then lack of consumer demand as the global economy entered turmoil. As if this wasn’t enough, the company recently announced plans to let go 25 percent of its staff and an ITC Commission ruled that SiRF stop imports of certain PND’s containing chips infringing on Broadcom patents. The feud between SiRF and Broadcom has been long-running and the latter has recently filed a new infringement case.
CSR will pick up a fair amount of cash from SiRF and add a whack of IP to its roster. While it does have some GPS technology, the addition of SiRF chips will likely allow the company to create combo chip designs with multiple radios on a single silicon wafer. Not surprisingly, Broadcom has been busy announcing combo chipsets the past few days.
The deal will also cut $35 million in costs, expected to be implemented within 60 days of the deal’s completion, and leave the new company with $378 million cash balance. The acquisition is also expected to be accretive to earnings per share by the second half of 2009.
Executive Chairman and acting chief executive officer Dado P. Banatao has been invited to join the CSR Board as Non-Executive Director while SiRF founder Kanwar Chadha has been asked to join as Executive Director.
The merger is expected to be completed in June 2009 subject to the usual shareholder and regulatory approvals.
Subscribe to GPSObsessed: Feed, Email
Random Posts
Seamless data integration between mobile phones and across all internet-connected platforms is all the rage these days. And the ability to synchronize contact information easily between devices has become a must-have feature.
DubMeNow provides such a service for all mobile phones and is one of the most innovative solution I’ve seen to date. The technology allows you to instantly exchange contact information on any US-based phone and eliminates the need for your input altogether. When a contact’s information is sent your way, it automatically uploads into your address book. You can also add notes to contact information and see where you met on Google Maps. Perhaps most importantly is that any changes your contact’s make in their DUB account automatically changes the information in your address book.
Taking privacy into account, DubMeNow allows you to use DUB ID, a username that allows information exchange without the need to reveal your phone number or email address. Group DUB allows for simultaneous multiple contact syncing, integrates with popular CRM platforms such as Saleforce and SugarCRM, and allows DUB invites to display on Twitter.
Related Points Of Interest
NAVTEQ has renewed its contract with the United States Military to provide the primary map data for the IRRIS and MilitaryHOMEFRONT LBS applications used by military personnel. IRRIS provides near real-time information used by the military to organize and track personnel and fleet and provides a POI database of security-related locations across the globe. Additionally, NAVTEQ will supply maps and POI’s to the MilitaryHOMEFRONT website which is designed to provide location-based resources to all US military personnel. I’d like to know how much this contract is worth to NAVTEQ. It must be a fair chunk of change.
Random Posts
A while ago we did a short video showing you some of the accessories Clove are now stocking for the BlackBerry Bold 9900. They have kindly said we can give away the Soft Shell and the Case-Mate Barley There Aluminum.
So how do you win one you may ask. Simple. All you need to do is be following both Clove and tracyandmatt on Twitter and retweet this post. It doesn’t get much easier than that.
We will pick two random winners in 48 hours and tweet the lucky winners names.
Entries are restricted to the UK due to postage posts.
Good luck.
Posted by: James
Source from Tracy and Matt’s Blog.
More than a dozen kayaks were stolen over the last few weeks from a small business owner at Hopkinton State Park. The owner decided to setup a trap and bought GPS tracking devices and hid them inside the kayaks. In the end GPS devices led to the arrest of a 33 year old man with two kayaks still on top of his vehicle.
The owner setup the device so that he would get email alerts when the GPS tracking device was moved. He sure got an email Monday night and reported the theft to the police. Police staked out where the vehicle was parked, waited for him to get into his vehicle and arrested him minutes later.
The thief, Alexander, had about 15 more kayaks in his possession and had a sign up offering them for sale… via
Unless it is TomTom of course. Apparently most GPS navigation systems screw up big time around California’s Death Valley and it’s been an issue for quite some time. Drivers get lost, get stranded and worst of all, even die.
One of the rangers took the matter into his hands and worked together with TomTom to iron things out:
That’s when he got in touch with Matt Rinaldi. He helps maintain road data for TomTom. Together, they combed through the company’s maps and changed or deleted more than 150 roads in Death Valley.
It’s a little story from NPR.