Thursday, August 19, 2010

Airband and Sparkplug Communications Merge, Get Funding

Dallas-based Airband and Scottsdale, Arizona-based Sparkplug Communications, both providers of fixed wireless broadband services, said today that they have merged. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. As part of the merger, the firms said they have received $20M in a combination of equity and debt. The $11M equity portion comes from prior backers Ignition Partners, Key Venture Partners, M/C Venture Partners and Trilogy Equity Partners, with $9M in debt financing coming from Silicon Valley Bank and MMV Financial. The firms said they will be headquartered in Dallas and operate as Airband Communicaitons. The new firm will be headed by former Sparkplug CEO Michael Ruley, with former Airband CEO Tim Kinnear becoming CFO.