BellSouth Corp. said it plans to offer $3 billion aggregate principal amount of five- and 10-year senior notes to help finance its share of the pending acquisition of AT&T Wireless Services Inc. by its wireless subsidiary Cingular Wireless L.L.C. JP Morgan, Lehman Brothers, Goldman Sachs and RBS Greenwich Capital are handling the offer. BellSouth had previously stated that it expects its share of the $41 billion acquisition to come to approximately $15 billion and is selling its Latin American wireless operations to Telefonica Moviles for $5.85 billion to help fund the acquisition.
E-Mobile Technologies issued a letter of intent to acquire Canadian antenna chipmaker RFTune. E-Mobile, a Texas-based provider of applications and content for smart phones, said it believes RFTune’s antenna chips can help increase coverage areas while diminishing signal fade and interference. The chips are patent-pending in the United States and Canada. Formerly known as CHL Technologies, E-Mobile has focused primarily on the Chinese wireless market, but hopes to expand to other areas.
Mobile applications provider Infowave Software, Inc. will pay royalties to use patented products from wireless messaging company Visto Corp., resolving a year-old legal struggle, Visto said. Details of the agreement were not disclosed, but Infowave acknowledged the validity of Visto’s complete patent portfolio as part of the settlement. In a press release from September 2003, Visto claimed that Infowave was violating a patent relating to “the system and method for synchronizing e-mail.”
Intec Telecom Systems plc said it has completed the acquisition of the Singl.eView retailing billing division from ADC Telecommunications Inc. The acquisition, which amounts to $74.5 million, gives Intec access to the more than 70 tier-one and tier-two carriers in 17 countries that use Singl.eView retail billing solutions, according to Intec. “With the acquisition of Singl.eView, Intec now has the three key revenue-generating OSS applications-retail, interconnect and content-plus three critical network [issues] facing OSS, convergent mediation, service activation and real-time charging,” said Mike Frayne, Intec executive chairman.
