Alvarion buys WiFi co Wavion for $30m

Alvarion Ltd. (Nasdaq: ALVR; TASE: ALVR) has acquired WiFi applications company Wavion Ltd. for $30 million in cash. Alvarion said, "This acquisition marks another milestone in the execution of Alvarion’s strategic plan aimed at shifting its primary focus from WiMAX-based RAN solutions to becoming a multi-technology wireless broadband solution powerhouse." According to Alvarion, Wavion had $16 million revenue in the preceding 12 months. Alvarion expects that Wavion will begin contributing to its net profit in the second quarter of 2012. Alvarion adds that it believes that the explosion of broadband data usage is creating an ever-growing set of coverage and capacity challenges that cannot be addressed effectively by any single technology. This is true for all types of wireless broadband networks from Tier-1 mobile carriers to wireless internet service providers, enterprises, governments and municipalities, and private network operators in various vertical markets. Wavion's WiFi technology including its beamforming capability, has reached a level of maturity and acceptance that makes it an attractive option for addressing the most demanding mission-critical applications. Alvarion intends to combine Wavion’s best-of-breed WiFi platform with Alvarion’s 4G RAN solution and recently-acquired distributed antenna systems (DAS) capabilities to create a full suite of capacity and coverage solutions that is not available from any other vendor. Nochi Dankner's venture capital arm Elron Electronic Industries Ltd. (TASE: ELRN) owns 67% of Wavion, and expects to receive $18 million from the sale and report a net profit of $17-20 million, depending on the conditional payout. Alvarion's share price fell 6.8% on Nasdaq yesterday to $1.09, giving a market cap of $67 million, but rose 5.8% by early afternoon on the TASE today to NIS 4.20. Elron's share price rose 6.8% to NIS 15.03, giving a market cap of NIS 440 million.

02 Secure Wireless hunts for federal loan for rural LTE

02 Secure Wireless, a Florida-based cell tower company, said it is hoping to get a $33 million federal loan to deploy an advanced LTE network to 500,000 customers in 65 cities and towns across rural parts of the South. The company wants a loan from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Rural Utilities Service (RUS), which has distributed broadband stimulus grants. 02 said that in August of this year, the Washington RUS office assigned the company a Government Field Representative, which has preliminarily approved all 65 cities and towns for RUS funding. 02 hopes that once it secures the loan it can "construct the most technologically advanced LTE network presently available," capable of download speeds of 25 Mbps. Daniel Baldridge, the head of investor relations of 02, said he expects the company to receive the loan by year-end. Once it receives the loan, it can start constructing the network, which will serve customers in under-served or un-served markets in Alabama, Florida, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina and South Carolina. Baldridge said he expects it to take around a year from the time 02 gets the loan to when its network will be operational. "It's all going to take some time to get going," he said. He declined to comment on what spectrum 02 is using, what specific kind of network technology it will use or what vendors the company is partnering with. He directed those questions to 02 CEO Val Kazia, who he said was unavailable for comment. An RUS spokesman did not immediately have a comment on the loan. 02 was founded in 2003 and is based in St. Augustine, Fla. As of Nov. 1, the publicly traded company had a market value of $1.97 million, and had 493 shareholders as of June 30. Under a recent merger with Earthcom Services, the company is currently being structured to provide flat-rate prepaid wireless services in developing countries internationally. Interestingly, 02's efforts to launch service come shortly after the collapse of Open Range Communications, which launched WiMAX service in 2009 with a similar goal of providing Internet service to under-served areas. Open Range's service was partially funded with a $267 million loan from the Rural Utilities Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. However, Open Range just last month filed for bankruptcy.