Edge Spectrum has agreed to acquire 196 television station licenses and construction permits in a deal with EICB-TV and Grace Worship Center valued at $72 million.
The transaction increases the company’s total discreet coverage to over 106 million persons.
This latest transaction, Edge Spectrum says, “solidly establishes the spectrum requirements” for the company’s planned nationwide ATSC 3.0 next-generation IP broadcasting network.
Edge Spectrum notes it is “leveraging the power of broadcasting to add a multicast extension to the unicast Internet delivering OTT video, IoT downloads and IP streaming content directly to edge devices of all types in both fixed and mobile environments.”
Vern Fotheringham, Chairman/CEO of Edge Spectrum, said, “We are teaming with service providers of all types with a new network layer that compliments the business cases of wired and wireless ISPs, content owners and distributors. By extending the efficiencies of cloud computing to the consumer edge of the network, we are essentially creating ‘millions of micro data centers’ featuring unprecedented reductions in the cost of mobile data delivery of digital media of all types.”
Further, Edge Spectrum says the architecture leverages the efficiencies of broadcasting with dramatic advances in capacity and cost reductions of digital storage. This will effectively lower costs for operators, consumers and solve future shortages of spectrum bandwidth.
The announcement comes one year after EICB-TV and Grace Worship Center collectively agreed to consummate this deal.
However, on April 2, 2017, the parties amended and restated for a fourth time their asset purchase agreement.
In a filing made with the Commission on Thursday (4/20), Edge Spectrum states it is executing promissory notes totaling $72 million in value, thus covering the entire value of the transaction.
Edge Spectrum, through EICB-TV, in March moved forward with the $3.2 million acquisition of some 60 LPTV stations and 10 LPTV construction permits from Three Angels Broadcasting (3AB).
That deal was originally consummated in October 2016; an amended purchase agreement on that deal indicated financial instability at Edge Spectrum, with a second $100,000 deposit made to 3AB by Edge Spectrum executed in the amendment.
