NextWave Wireless holds controlling interest in 154 Advanced Wireless Services licenses, 30 wireless Communication Services licenses, Educational Broadband Service licenses and Broadband Radio Service licenses. That’s a huge amount of Wireless Spectrum real estate.

Unlike the recent FCC auction, the possible sale of NextWave’s wireless holdings would be offered by a private company. The company recently divested their 700 Mhz spectrum as part of the FCC auction that made headlines for months here in the United States.

The company is better known for its chip sets, WiMax, mobile television systems and other products than it is for its wireless holdings. Dumping the deadweight of the wireless spectrum would improve its monetary situation enough to pump more into developing the next generation of its existing product set and also create new products based on WiMax concepts and other new technologies.

The best possible way to purchase the properties for another company would be as one large chunk instead of in individual pieces. That combined set of wireless spectrum licenses would give that company a blanket of service over much of the United States. Splitting the properties would create fragmentation in service and devalue the sale.

So far the sale is still in the planning stages. NextWave hired Deutche Bank and UBS to give them an overall valuation of the properties. This was in response to interest generated by the sale of their 700 Mhz spectrum, based on comments by NextWave’s CEO:

“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,” said Allen Salmasi, CEO and president of NextWave, in a statement. “Since the completion of the recent 700 MHz auction, we have received multiple offers for our U.S. spectrum assets.”

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Entry was posted on Friday, April 25th, 2008 at 12:30 pm under Internet, Wi-Fi.

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