Weekly Deal Roundup

Clearwire gets more funding from Sprint, other investors
From: RCR Wireless News
Clearwire Corp. confirmed it would gain another $1.564 billion in funding from its existing partners to help it continue to build its nationwide WiMAX network. Sprint Nextel Corp., which owns 51% of Clearwire and is struggling with its 3G subscriber base, will contribute the most money, $1.176 billion. In a separate announcement, Sprint said it plans to lay off between 2,000 and 2,500 employees to save about $350 million a year.
Other contributors are Comcast Corp., which said it will contribute $196 million; Time Warner Cable Inc., putting up $103 million; Intel Corp., offering $50 million; Eagle River Holdings L.L.C., contributing $20 million; and Bright House Networks L.L.C., which is giving $19 million. Clearwire said it will receive about $1 billion in the next few days, with another $440 million coming at closing of the deal, expected to happen by the end of the year. The remaining funds will be contributed in the first quarter of 2010.
Sprint and the other investors, including Google Inc., have already collectively pledged $3.5 billion to Clearwire to build out its network. A Google spokesman told Reuters that while the Internet search giant still supports Clearwire, it will not offer any more financing to the company.
Clearwire is announcing its third-quarter results later today, which should give Wall Street a better idea of how quickly the company is gaining subscribers as it rolls out WiMAX service across the country. The carrier plans to be in 25 markets by the end of the year.
As part of the financing package, Clearwire plans to sell $1.45 billion of debt to pay off a $1.4 billion credit facility, enabling the carrier to access another $240 million of debt.
Google to pay $750M for mobile ad network AdMob
From: CNET News
Google’s back on the acquisition front, spending $750 million in stock Monday to acquire mobile display ad company AdMob.
AdMob is perhaps best known for serving display ads on iPhones, but it also recently started a business unit focused on ads for Android phones. The start-up would appear to fit well into Google’s advertising business model, giving Google a leg up in the still-small but fast-growing world of mobile advertising.
“I’m excited because I believe this will be an important moment for everyone involved in producing, consuming, or monetizing engaging products on mobile,” wrote AdMob founder and CEO Omar Hamoui in a blog post Monday. “The truth is that the mobile industry has had no shortage of creative energy, amazing products, and talented entrepreneurs. But until now, it has always felt like those of us involved in this space played second fiddle to our online brethren. I believe that time is over.”
Read more here.
Inmarsat Plc Announces $650 million Senior Notes Offering
From: Reuters
Inmarsat Plc announced that its wholly-owned subsidiary company Inmarsat Finance plc has commenced an offering of senior notes due November 2017 to non-US persons outside the United States. These new notes will be guaranteed on a senior basis by Inmarsat Group Limited, and on a senior subordinated basis by Inmarsat Investments Limited and certain of its subsidiaries. The aggregate principal amount of the new notes being offered is expected to be $650 million, which, through a series of steps, will be used to redeem the entire principal amount of $160 million outstanding under Inmarsat Finance plc’s 7 5/8% senior notes due 2012 and the entire principal amount of $450 million outstanding under Inmarsat Finance II plc’s 10 3/8% senior discount notes due 2012, and to pay the associated note redemption premia and the fees and euters Wireless
Read more here.
Google Has Acquired Gizmo5
From: TechCrunch
Last month Skype was in talks to acquire VoIP startup Gizmo5. It was a perfect backup plan in case all that IP litigation didn’t work out. – Gizmo5’s SIP infrastructure could theoretically replace Skype’s proprietary P2P back end.
After the Skype settlement, though, Gizmo5’s strategic value to Skype sort of plummeted. In the meantime, Google bought them, say multiple sources with knowledge of the deal, for around $30 million in cash. The deal is done, say our sources, and will be announced shortly.
Gizmo5 is a good fit with a number of Google products. Google Talk allows voice calls between users but has no PSTN link to allow incoming or outbound calls to real phones. Gizmo5 does this well already.
Read the entire story at Tech Crunch.
AT&T Completes Acquisition of Centennial Communications
From: AT&T
AT&T announced that it has completed its acquisition of Centennial Communications Corp. (Nasdaq:CYCL). The acquisition enhances AT&T’s network coverage across the Midwest and Southeast United States and in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Read the entire press release.