Telecom Lead India: Global test and measurement company Spirent Communications has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Metrico Wireless, a provider of technology and solutions that help analyze the performance and subscriber quality of experience (QoE) of mobile devices in the field.
The acquisition is valued at a cash consideration of $52.0 million.
Based in Frederick, Maryland, Metrico Wireless is privately held by Dimitrios Topaltzas and others.
The acquisition is in line with the Spirent’s strategy of investing in growing and emerging technology markets.
Metrico’s cloud-basedTesting as a Service (“TaaS”) solutions deliver end-to-end testing under real-world conditions on live networks with comprehensive reporting and analysis, measuring QoE of devices and services with respect to voice, data, video, battery, location and application performance.
Metrico also supplies innovative Measurement Systems to carriers and device manufacturers
The acquisition will bring together Spirent’s performance test strength in the lab with Metrico’s field-based, subscriber-level focus. The combined solution will give increased satisfaction and customer loyalty while reducing time to market, as well as operational costs.
“Innovation and competition in the wireless industry is driving aggressive release cycles of sophisticated devices and services,” said Bill Burns, CEO of Spirent. “As carriers and device vendors strive to minimise time to market, improve subscriber quality of experience and reduce device return rates, they must also contend with disruptive technologies including 4G data, VoIP and the cloud.”
Metrico’s Fit4Launch program ensures that wireless devices fully meet service provider performance requirements prior to commercial launch.
Under this program Metrico has certified more than 800 different devices across all operating systems and cellular technologies, ensuring that next-generation technologies and services such as LTE and VoLTE, HD voice and video, and location-based applications are well received by subscribers.
“The combination of our service and product solutions for the lab and field results in a unique offering that enables operators and manufacturers to optimize end-to-end QoE more efficiently than ever before,” said Dimitrios Topaltzas, CEO of Metrico Wireless.
Spirent expects to consolidate $6.0 to $7.0 million in revenue post-acquisition in 2012, with a positive return on sales. The revenue for the first full year post-acquisition in 2013 is expected to be in the range of $26.0 to $28.0 million, operating at Spirent’s average return on sales.
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