Stokes agrees to sell Vividwireless to Optus
Kerry Stokes appears to have shelved his ambitions as a wireless telco, with his Seven Group Holdings today announcing that it has agreed to sell Vividwireless Group to Optus for $230m.
According to the announcement: “Through the acquisition, Optus will also gain access to up to 98MHz of spectrum in the 2.3GHz band, a band already used by some of the world’s leading operators to provide 4G services.
“Optus plans to use this spectrum to build a new 4G network using LTE-TDD technology. This new network will deliver wireless broadband to households and businesses in metropolitan Australia with typical download speeds ranging from 25Mbps to 87Mbps – twice as fast as existing competitive 4G services.”
Peter Gammell, CEO of Seven Group Holdings, said: “We are proud of our achievements with Vividwireless. For Seven Group Holdings this sale recognises value for the investment we’ve made in Vividwireless. Optus’ expertise will allow the business to grow into the future and take the pioneering work we’ve done in 4G to the next level.”
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Interesting. With ACP reported for sale for $300m, I wonder if this gives Stokes a war chest to buy ACP and merge it with PacMags.
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Brands! they just become play things of the rich, build them up sell them on. Why have any brands at all, petrol, grocery shopping, banking, telcos, toilet tissue, orange juice, is there a tangible point of difference??
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Interesting move as I always thought 7West had the perfect circle with Vivid wireless. It linked together print, tv, the web like no other media company in Australia and would have delivered both channel 7 content and the West Newspaper in a better and faster format. One now wonders what new content they will be developing in the future
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another 7 investment bites the dust … they should stick to TV and tractors
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Hopefully Optus can use the spectrum to build and operate a real 4G network using LTE based technology rather than Wimax
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