Actix acquires ComOpt

Consolidation in the wireless space occurred this week outside of the Cingular AT&T Wireless mega-merger as network performance engineering software company Actix acquired fellow UK company ComOpt for an undisclosed sum.

ComOpt provides automated wireless optimization solutions to the global market. Together the companies will provide a vendor-independent performance engineering solution set for all major wireless technologies that will aid operators in system verification, optimization and troubleshooting. They serve more than 200 operators around the world.

Actix alone serves 170 operators including Verizon, Vodafone, Orange, SKT Korea, Hutchinson 3G and T-Mobile. The acquisition of ComOpt brings together two private, but profitable companies with complimentary technologies.

"ComOpt, in the 2G world, has been involved mainly in automated optimization around planning tools used in the early stages of a rollout," said Rob Dobson, CEO of Actix. "With 3G, we believe there is a great opportunity to move automated optimization out of planning, which is a very static activity, and into the real world of operation optimization, which is a constant activity."

The acquisition closed almost two weeks ago, but was announced this week. Dobson said there are no plans to consolidate the companies. "We see both businesses continuing under their current brands," Dobson said. "Effectively we see this as an extremely strong partnership. Yes, we have acquired ComOpts and have the option to assimilate the company, but we have decided not to do that and expect to really find ways to leverage the strengths of both companies."

ComOpts will be operated as a business unit within Actix and will retain its current operating structure. "We expect to see growth from both sides," Dobson said.

Dobson expects that growth to come as operators begin to finally deploy their CDMA-based 3G networks. "We believe the landscape is shifting and CDMA, which underlies UMTS as well as all the 3G standards around the world, is a technology that relies a lot more on optimization for anything close to reasonable performance," Dobson said. "CDMA is a technology that can deliver good performance, but it difficult to tame. It requires a lot of hands-on management."

The transition, now that it’s underway, will present its own challenges, which Actix and ComOpt hope to address. "They face big challenges in squeezing more out of their existing networks while rolling out 3G networks," Dobson said. "They have to achieve that goal against the backdrop of fairly constant resourcing--there just aren’t a lot of engineers that can be hired or resources that can be applied so they have to become more efficient. That’s something automation can bring and ComOpt’s focus is automation."