comic book series see nextwave . nextwave wireless type private founded san diego california usa headquarters san diego california united states parent at & t 2013 present website www.nextwave.com nextwave wireless inc. is a wireless technology company that produces mobile multimedia solutions and speculates in the wireless spectrum market . the company consists principally of various wireless spectrum holdings . the company is most notable for successfully suing the u.s. government for improperly seizing its assets while under bankruptcy protection . at & t announced its acquisition of nextwave in 2012 . 1 history edit the company original spun out of qualcomm in 1995 and began life as the biggest bidder in the fcc c block . nextwave originally won the licenses in an auction intended for small businesses with limited resources in 1996 . nextwave which bid 4.7 billion for the licenses made the minimum 10 percent down payment of 500 million for the spectrum . but shortly thereafter nextwave filed for bankruptcy protection and defaulted on its payments for the licenses . the fcc in turn confiscated the licenses and re sold them to verizon wireless and the subsidiaries of at & t wireless and cingular wireless among others for 17 billion in an auction that ended in january 2001 . ultimately nextwave prevailed in the supreme court 8 1 and was permitted to keep the pcs licenses . nextwave s bankruptcy protection lasted approximately ten years during which time the asset value of the licenses had dramatically increased and nextwave was able to repay the original debt and sell their spectrum assets to verizon wireless cingular now at & t and metropcs . they re emerged as nextwave wireless with 550m in capital . the reborn company had several areas of focus development of a 4g broadband network through its network solutions group in las vegas nv development of wimax baseband and rf integrated circuits and related technology in its advanced technology group in san diego ca and accumulation of spectrum and other carrier assets both in the u.s. and internationally . nextwave made several significant acquisitions that shaped its business and technology strategy . packetvideo was acquired in 2005 as was a majority share in cygnus multimedia a start up firm focusing on wimax . in 2007 nextwave completed the acquisition of gonetworks a startup developing beamforming wifi equipment and ip wireless a uk firm that developed td cdma equipment for 100m . the ip wireless business failed to produce expected revenue and in late 2008 it was sold back to its management team for 1m . due to financial difficulties nextwave was forced to shut down the gonetworks subsidiary and the network solutions group in 2008 followed by the 3 year old advanced technology group and the cessation of wimax development in 2009 . business week reported on august 2 2012 that at & t agreed to acquire nextwave with its debt for a price of up to 600 million . at & t wishes to use nextwave s spectrum to bolster its own . 2 the acquisition closed on january 24 2013 . references edit m & a august 3 2012 at & t agrees to pay as much as 600 million for nextwave . external links edit nextwave wireless at & t agrees to pay as much as 600 million for nextwave retrieved from https en.wikipedia.org w index.php title nextwave wireless & oldid 743674991 categories companies formerly listed on nasdaqcompanies based in san diegonetworking companies of the united states navigation menu personal tools not logged intalkcontributionscreate accountlog in namespaces article talk variants views read edit view history more search navigation main pagecontentsfeatured contentcurrent eventsrandom articledonate to wikipediawikipedia store interaction helpabout wikipediacommunity portalrecent changescontact page tools what links hererelated changesupload filespecial pagespermanent linkpage informationwikidata itemcite this page print export create a bookdownload as pdfprintable version languages add links this page was last modified on 10 october 2016 at 17 35 . text is available under the creative commons attribution sharealike license ; additional terms may apply . by using this site you agree to the terms of use and privacy policy . wikipedia is a registered trademark of the wikimedia foundation inc. a non profit organization . privacy policy about wikipedia disclaimers contact wikipedia developers cookie statement mobile view