[07-11-11] U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Sean Lane approved Dish Network<\/b>\u2019s $1.375 billion \u201cstalking horse\u201d auction bid to acquire TerreStar Networks<\/b>, the companies confirmed July 8.<\/p>\n
The sale, which also has the approval of TerreStar\u2019s creditors, was the result of a bankruptcy auction held in June to end TerreStar\u2019s nine-month Chapter 11 protection period and resolve the company\u2019s $1 billion of debt. Dish Network\u2019s minimum bid for TerreStar received no rival counter bids.
\n Analysts were surprised at the auctions outcome, with many firms expecting Dish Network to compete with a group of TerreStar\u2019s senior debt holders and wireless operator MetroPCS Communications<\/b> through the auction\u2019s June 27 bid deadline. Competing offers for TerreStar were required to be at least $55.5 million higher than Dish Network\u2019s offer.
\n Zacks Investment Research<\/b> issued a report July 8 speculating the impact of Dish Network\u2019s aggressive campaign to acquire TerreStar spectrum \u2014 20MHz of the 2.0GHz band \u2014 with the contiguous 20MHz of 2.0GHz spectrum it inherited when it purchased bankrupt hybrid S-band service provider DBSD North America in March.
\n \u201cThe acquisition of DBSD provides Dish Network an extremely valuable spectrum for both wireless and wireline communications. Additionally, Dish Network itself owns a slot of highly demanded 700 MHz wireless frequency, which is generally used for 4G LTE network.Using these slots of airwaves, the company can form a formidable video-on-demand service over a wireless network of mobile handsets such as smartphones and tablets,\u201d the firm said in the report.
\n Dish Network will provide $325 million more to DBSD\u2019s parent company, Ico Global Communications \u2013 soon to be re-branded to Pendrell Corp. \u2013 and remain committed to DBSD for another $87.5 million as debtor-in-possession credit facility. Dish Network also bought Blockbuster on April 7 for about $320 million, with $228 million of the purchase made in cash. A U.S. bankruptcy court approved the auction the same day. Dish Network said it purchased Blockbuster primarily for its video-on-demand service to complement Dish Network\u2019s own satellite-TV offering but will use the Blockbuster locations to cross-sell its satellite services.
\n \u201cWe believe Dish Network is trying hard to be the storage medium for the valuable wireless spectrum that can be used to grow a viable pay-TV distribution network or can transform the company to a wireless service provider. TerreStar owns around 20 MHz of wireless spectrum and is currently working on a project to launch world\u2019s first satellite smartphone,\u201d Zacks analysts said.
\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
[07-11-11] U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Sean Lane approved Dish Network\u2019s $1.375 billion \u201cstalking horse\u201d auction bid to acquire TerreStar Networks, the companies confirmed July 8. The sale, which also has the approval of TerreStar\u2019s creditors, was the result of a bankruptcy auction held in June to end TerreStar\u2019s nine-month Chapter 11 protection period and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-84565","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84565"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=84565"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84565\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84565"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84565"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}