Industry News
Clear Channel Considers Buyout
The largest U.S. radio station chain, which has an estimated value of around $16 billion, is putting itself on the block.
Clear Channel Communications Inc. (CCC) of Texas, which owns about 1,150 radio stations and operates 155,000 advertising displays across the country, has hired Goldman Sachs to help it evaluate buyout offers.
So far two possible suitors have been talking with the San Antonio company: A consortium of Kohlberg Kravis, Providence Equity Partners and Blackstone, and also a consortium of Thomas H. Lee Partners, and potentially including Texas Pacific Group and Bain Capital, the Wall Street Journal said Thursday.
Any deal for CCC would have to pass muster with the family of founder Lowry Mays, which owns 7 percent of the conglomerate.
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Alcatel Wins €53 Million GSM/GPRS Network Expansion Contracts
Alcatel representatives announced that it has secured three separate GSM and GPRS expansion contracts with Chinese mobile service providers, Shaanxi Mobile Communication Company Limited (Shaanxi MCC) and Jiangsu Mobile Communication Company Limited (Jiangsu MCC), both subsidiaries of China Mobile. The contracts, valued at approximately €53 million (US$67 million), were won through Alcatel Shanghai Bell, Alcatel's flagship company in China. They confirm Alcatel's growing momentum in the country.
Under the contract with Shaanxi MCC, Alcatel will provide and install its Evolium GSM/EDGE platform to expand mobile service in five major cities across Shaanxi Province: Yulin, Yan'an, Shangluo, Baoji and Xianyang. To ensure quality of service, Alcatel has reinforced its rural coverage solution with indoor and outdoor base stations.
Alcatel will also provide Shaanxi MCC with its Alcatel's advanced TCA™-compliant SGSN (Serving GPRS Support Node), that will enable nearly one million additional subscribers to take advantage of enhanced mobile voice and data services, such as web browsing, video streaming, and instant messaging.
Alcatel's contract with Jiangsu MCC provides for installation of Alcatel's Evolium GSM/EDGE solutions including Base Stations (BTS), Base Station Controllers (BSC), Transcoder (TC), Multi-BSS Fast Packet Server (MFS) and Operation & Maintenance Center for Radio (OMC-R). Once deployed the network will serve subscribers in Jiangsu Province located in the cities of Nanjing, Yangzhou, Xuzhou, Huaian, Yancheng, Lianyungang, Suqian and Taizhou. This is the 9th GSM network expansion contract that Alcatel has secured with Jiangsu MCC.
Alcatel is a leader in providing advanced mobile communication solutions in China, a position the company established as early as 1993 when it introduced the country's first GSM system in Zhejiang Province. To date, Alcatel's Evolium solutions have already been installed in 25 Chinese provinces.
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Cisco Announces Agreement to Acquire Orative
Representatives of Cisco announced a definitive agreement to acquire the privately-held company, Orative Corp of San Jose, California. Orative provides an application which will allow Cisco to extend its Unified Communications portfolio to mobile devices such as cell phones and smartphones.
In March 2006, Cisco announced its Unified Communications system based on Cisco's service-oriented network architecture (SONA), which enables businesses of all sizes to integrate their communications systems with their IT infrastructure, thereby creating a single communications platform. The Cisco Unified Communications system of voice, video and IP communications products and applications enables organizations to communicate more effectively by leveraging all services located in the network from anywhere, with any device, at anytime.
Orative develops mobile software solutions that extend the communications and collaboration capabilities of the Cisco Unified Communications system to business mobile phone users. With Orative Enterprise Software, mobile phone users can coordinate conversations, collaborate with colleagues, view information on Unity voicemail messages, screen unwanted telephone calls and interruptions, and securely access personal and corporate phone books. Together, Cisco and Orative will transform the mobile phone into a true business device, using Cisco Unified CallManager for call control, Cisco MeetingPlace for collaboration and Cisco Unity as the voicemail platform.
Under the terms of these agreements, Cisco will pay approximately $31 million in cash for Orative. The acquisition is subject to various standard closing conditions, including applicable regulatory approvals, and is expected to close in the second quarter of Cisco's fiscal year 2007.
Orative was founded in 2002 and has 33 employees based in San Jose, California.
Upon close of the transaction the Orative team and product portfolio will be integrated into Cisco's Voice Technology Group, led by Proctor.
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U.S. Army Awards General Dynamics $18 Million for Training Systems
The U.S. Army Tank-Automotive and Armaments Command, Picatinny Arsenal, N.J., has awarded General Dynamics Ordnance and Tactical Systems an $18.6 million contract modification for the manufacture, assembly, delivery, staging and fielding of M313 120mm Mortar Sub-Caliber Training Devices. This option award brings the total contract value for 60mm, 81mm and 120mm mortar weapon systems to $44.5 million dollars. The contract being modified was initially awarded in December 2005. General Dynamics Ordnance and Tactical Systems is a business unit of General Dynamics.
The M313 120mm Mortar Sub-Caliber Training Device uses an M253 81mm cannon inserted into a mock M120 120mm Mortar System barrel, allowing 120mm mortar training to be performed with lower cost 81mm service and training ammunition.
Work will be performed at Watervliet Arsenal, N.Y.; St. Petersburg, Fla.; Huntsville, Ala.; and Bethesda, Md. Deliveries under this contract modification are expected to be completed by December 2008.
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U.S. Army Awards Raytheon $8 Million Patriot Engineering Services Contract
Raytheon Company has been awarded an $8 million contract modification from the U.S.Army Aviation and Missile Command to provide engineering services support to the Patriot Air and Missile Defense program.
This award provides additional funds for Raytheon Integrated Defense Systems (IDS) to increase levels of software, system engineering and international support, to increase efforts on the Tactical Command System and Battery Command Post, and to provide additional logistics and depot support.
Patriot is fielded by the U.S. Army and nine countries: Germany, Greece, Israel, Japan, Kuwait, the Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, Spain, and Taiwan. Patriot engineering service work is performed in Raytheon IDS locations in Massachusetts, Alabama, Texas, New Mexico, and Maryland, as well as foreign locations.
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Oracle and Intel to Collaborate on Enterprise Computing
Representatives on Oracle and Intel Corporation announced Wednesday a joint effort to help accelerate deployment of solutions based on Oracle and Intel technology. This effort builds on a longstanding enterprise computing relationship and is expected to deliver a new level of performance and reliability to customers using Oracle solutions running on industry-leading Intel Core microarchitecture-based Linux servers.
Through this collaboration, the two companies will work together to ensure timely certification and coordinated delivery of Intel and Oracle products into the datacenter. As part of this work, Intel and Oracle will establish industry-standard benchmarks for the data center for joint publication. Intel will also contribute to Oracle's Unbreakable Linux 2.0 program by working with Oracle on Enterprise Linux enhancements for the two companies' mutual customers' benefit. Intel and Oracle plan to implement these features, in conjunction with the Linux community and the Linux vendors, to include support of enterprise features and optimizations for Intel-based server platforms.
The companies have also agreed to joint-marketing activities promoting the benefits of Oracle solutions running on Intel Core microarchitecture-based Linux server deployments.
