MetroBridge Networks has completed a complex financial restructuring which included merging with another company, resulting in a public offering in Canada. That revenue will enable MetroBridge to expand into North American markets from their current service areas of Vancouver, British Columbia and Phoenix, Arizona.
MetroBridge is signaling that it intends to use their new capital to invest heavily in expanding into US markets: Dave King, President and CEO of MetroBridge said, "It has always been our intent to participate in the consolidation of the wireless internet services industry in the US. The company has completed its first acquisition in Phoenix and has plans to enter new cities and a publicly-traded stock will give us the currency to execute on our strategic plan."
In expanding into the US, MetroBridge appears to be in for a hard fight because there are now numerous (what appear to be) direct competitors such as Towerstream, Clearwire, soon Sprint (WiMAX), and recently XO subsidiary Nextlink Wireless. However, digging deeper, MetroBridge is actually in a different market segment than Clearwire and Sprint in providing services exclusively to businesses, fixed service only, and typically providing high-bandwidth services (MetroBridge cites its maximum connection speed as 2500 Mbps). Nextlink appears to be selling communications links exclusively on its licensed spectrum, and MetroBridge (and Towerstream) are much more opportunistic in its choices of which spectrum to use.
While this focus does place MetroBridge squarely in competition with Towerstream, there's plenty of room for the two companies to coexist in the US. For the types of Broadband Wireless Internet Access services that MetroBridge, Towerstream, and XO provide, many major US cities are served by small, often capital-starved Broadband Wireless Internet Access Service Providers. With both Towerstream and Metrobridge flush with new capital for acquisitions and new markets, it might be another interesting summer in the Broadband Wireless Internet Access industry, harkening back to the summer of 2000 (if memory serves) when Sprint and Worldcom both snapped up numerous companies to acquire their 2.5 GHz spectrum licenses.
Readers - are there any players of a similar scale to Towerstream and MetroBridge that are bent on expansion and flush with new capital that I've missed? If so, please let me know.
By Steve Stroh
This article is Copyright © 2007 by Steve Stroh.
(Apologies to readers for light postings this week as I've been dealing with recovering from a system crash.)
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