{"id":43659,"date":"2013-08-05T10:16:44","date_gmt":"2013-08-05T08:16:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=43659"},"modified":"2013-08-05T10:45:33","modified_gmt":"2013-08-05T08:45:33","slug":"iburst-for-sale-sources","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/internet\/43659\/iburst-for-sale-sources\/","title":{"rendered":"iBurst for sale: sources"},"content":{"rendered":"

Industry speculation is rife that WBS<\/a>, the parent of iBurst<\/a>, is for sale and that big companies including Vodacom<\/a>, MTN<\/a>, and Dimension Data<\/a> are interested.<\/p>\n

One industry source close to the development said that Dimension Data has already offered R250 million for WBS, but that offer was rejected.<\/p>\n

It is understood that the WBS shareholders are looking at a selling price of around R500 million.<\/p>\n

WBS has a few valuable assets in the telecommunications market, including spectrum, an established wireless network with high sites, and an extensive microwave backhaul network.<\/p>\n

iBurst\u2019s 1,800MHz spectrum is particularly valuable to mobile operators such as MTN and Vodacom who can use this spectrum to roll out an LTE network.<\/p>\n

Vodacom said that it explores investment opportunities on a regular basis, but can\u2019t comment on any specific companies.<\/p>\n

Eben Albertyn<\/a>, Chief Technology Officer at MTN SA, said that \u201cin line with internal corporate governance, as well as JSE requirements, MTN does not comment on market speculation\u201d.<\/p>\n

Dimension Data could also not comment, saying that it does not comment on rumours or speculation.<\/p>\n

More on iBurst\/WBS<\/h3>\n

No accurate invoice from Icasa: iBurst CEO<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Accusations fly in iBurst, ICASA battle<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

iBurst wins court interdict against ICASA<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

ICASA breaks silence on iBurst equipment seizure<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

iBurst network outage update<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Industry sources confirm that WBS, iBurst is for sale, and that a few large players are showing interest<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":43660,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9882],"tags":[26,75,28,27,1533],"class_list":["post-43659","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-internet","tag-headline","tag-iburst","tag-mtn","tag-vodacom","tag-wbs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43659","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43659"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43659\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43667,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43659\/revisions\/43667"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43660"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43659"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43659"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43659"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}