Cisco has reached a definitive agreement to purchase Navini Networks, a leader in the WiMax broadband wireless space
Richardson, Tex.-based Navini, is a pioneer with “smart beamforming” technologies with Multi-Input, Multi-Output antennas, a combination that improves the performance and range of WiMax services, while lowering deployment and operating costs for service providers. Officials at Cisco said Navini’s WiMax products will extend the company’s market-leading WiFi and WiFi-Mesh portfolios.
Cisco will pay approximately $330 million in cash and assumed options for Navini.
Upon the close of the acquisition, expected in the second quarter of Cisco’s 2008 fiscal year, Navini will be integrated into Cisco’s Wireless Networking Business Unit, under the Ethernet and Wireless Technology Group.
The acquisition of Navini will help extend and enhance Cisco's IP Next Generation Network to enable service providers to deliver any service to any device over any network - a gambit that Cisco calls the Connected Life.
“Emerging country service providers are in expansion mode, building out broadband wireless networks and are concerned about deployment costs and the availability of skilled resources,” said Brett Galloway, vice president and general manager of the Cisco’s Wireless Networking Business Unit, in a statement. “Around the world broadband wireless networks based upon WiMax have the potential to add millions of new Internet users who cannot be reached economically using copper or fiber infrastructures. Additionally, WiMax networks will help drive the transition to open IP-based broadband wireless architectures and accelerate the rollout of new applications and services.”
