Williams Gets Court Approval to Purchase Assets of iBEAM
On Wednesday, the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Delaware gave approval for Williams Communications to acquire the assets of iBEAM for $25 million in cash and certain liabilities. The court-approved asset purchase will close within the next few business days, and includes facilities, equipment leases, customer contracts and intellectual property.
On October 11th, iBEAM (
www.ibeam.com) filed for bankruptcy protection and announced that Williams was acquiring assets of the company.
"The combination of Williams Communications' award-winning fiber-optic network and broadband media platform with the iBEAM assets positions us as a market leader in streaming media," said Howard Janzen, chairman and chief executive officer of Williams Communications, in a statement. "Adding the iBEAM capabilities to our mediaXtranet services, which include digital media management, content gathering and distribution, managed web hosting and streaming, establishes a comprehensive suite of services and capabilities that is unrivaled. This deal will also drive a tremendous amount of IP traffic to our network, as iBEAM has averaged more than 100 million streams monthly."
According to the company, $6 million dollars of the purchase amount will be used to repay a loan extended by Williams Communications to iBEAM to make sure that it continued operating during the bankruptcy proceedings.
Williams will integrate iBEAM into its Vyvx Broadband Media unit, which provides broadband media services. In addition, iBEAM's multi-million dollar network operations center in Silicon Valley will be moving to a Williams production facility in Oklahoma City.
Williams will maintain its facility in Santa Clara, but is closing iBEAM offices in Sunnyvale, San Ramon, and Santa Monica. According to a statement, Williams is extending job offers to 200 iBEAM employes in their existing jobs. But a company representative couldn't say how many employees were losing their jobs because of the bankruptcy filing and asset acquisition.