Motorola to buy Orthogon

Motorola is bulking up its broadband wireless portfolio by buying its technology partner of two years, Orthogon Systems, for an undisclosed amount. A maker of extremely high-capacity wireless Ethernet bridges, Orthogon has been supplying point-to-point backhaul gear for the vendor’s Canopy line since Motorola invested in $8 million in Orthogon in December 2004.

Motorola didn’t release any terms of the private purchase, but it made the announcement just ahead of its own first quarter earnings call scheduled for 5 p.m. today. The deal is expected to close in the first half of 2006.

Orthogon’s two lines, OS-Gemini and OS-Spectra, support capacities of 33 Mb/s over 12 MHz of spectrum and 300 Mb/s over 30 MHz of spectrum, all in the 5.8 GHz unlicensed frequencies. Based on Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing and software-defined radio technology, OS-Spectra in particular is capacity monster, averaging 10-hertz bit and making it one of the most spectrally efficient radios in the market. Motorola officials said they plan to build on that core technology in its MOTOwi4 broadband access portfolio.