San Diego – Qualcomm (NASD: QCOM) announced on Monday that it will sell
the U.S. spectrum licenses associated with its failed FLO TV mobile TV service
to AT&T (NYSE: T), for $1.925 billion. The company recently acknowledged lackluster
consumer adoption of FLO TV, and said it will shut down the service completely
in March 2011.
AT&T said it will deploy the Qualcomm spectrum as
supplemental downlink, using carrier aggregation technology "designed to
deliver substantial capacity gains by enabling unpaired spectrum to be used in
conjunction with paired spectrum."
"This is a positive outcome for
Qualcomm and our stakeholders," said Paul Jacobs, chairman and CEO of
Qualcomm.
"Carrier aggregation, supplemental downlink and LTE multicast
technologies are an exciting evolution of next generation wireless systems to
economically support increasing consumer demand for mobile TV and other rich
media content.
"We will continue to drive the development and delivery of these
new capabilities, which build on our technology leadership and deep experience
with 3G, 4G and broadcast technologies."
Related Links:
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(DMW previous coverage)
