Engin Buys Into Unwired

Written by Adam Gosling

Tuesday, 04 September 2007

VoIP service provider and triple play wannabe, Engin has announced the acquisition of approximately 10.38 per cent of the ordinary shares of Unwired through a number of on market transactions. The VoIP player, which is part owned by the Seven Network, paid around 40 cents per share for the stake. The company says the investment should enable Engin, as a significant shareholder, to participate in the growth of wireless broadband in Australia. Engin recently announced its entry into the ISP business with a deal to provide naked DSL services wholesaled from Optus Communications. It says the money for the acquisition comes from the debt funding provided by a Seven Network and was undertaken because it has been "closely following the global development of WiMAX, and believes the technology is well placed at a point of maturity to deliver both fixed and ultimately mobile broadband solutions to consumers." Unwired owns the vast majority of metropolitan spectrum for the licensed bands across which WiMAX will operate in Australia. Neil Gamble, Executive Chairman of Engin said, "We see a strong rationale for Engin and Unwired working co-operatively. A combination of Unwired's wireless access services with Engin's broadband telephony and TiVo offering would deliver a compelling consumer proposition." "As shown by our recent announcement to deliver ADSL2+ to customers, we see broadband access as an enabler of consumer services such as voice and TiVo . As we develop new capabilities in voice technology, we see our services operating on multiple devices, across multiple access technologies." Furthermore, Engin says it is interested in "exploring other options with the board of Unwired to unlock what Engin's directors believe to be substantial synergies and other benefits in leveraging the two companies' assets". However, the company does not have any present intention to make a take over offer for Unwired, although the it won't rule out the possibility of exploring a merger transaction in the future. For more background see our VoIP News coverage. Related news items Tiny Rugged UMPC WIth Vista -10/10/2007 Hybrid Drive Boosts Laptop's Skillset -10/10/2007 Consumers Want FMC: Companies Don't See The Benefit -02/10/2007 The Poor Man's Palm -02/10/2007 Nokia Buys Map Company For US$8 Billion -02/10/2007 Older news items Australia's First Commercial WiMAX Deployment -14/11/2006 Tag This Now: