Ixia completes Catapult's acquisition

CALABASAS, USA: Ixia, a leading, global provider of converged IP performance test systems, has completed its acquisition of Catapult Communications Corp. for approximately $105 million, or $63 million net of Catapult’s cash and investments.
The acquisition was conducted by means of a tender offer for all of the outstanding common shares of Catapult, and was completed by a merger that was effected on Tuesday June 23.

With the additional wireless solutions from the Catapult acquisition, Ixia has expanded its suite of test platforms that enable service providers to accelerate deployment of wireless services based on converged networks that support increasingly powerful, engaging, and complex multimedia applications.

Growing deployment of multimedia applications through smartphones and notebooks has already stressed the data capacity requirements of wireless networks. Smartphones are increasingly being used as on-ramps to the multimedia Internet rather than just to make phone calls. Wireless networks need to be provisioned, deployed and tested with next-generation media-rich services in mind from day one.

With this acquisition, Ixia becomes a single source solution for testing converged multiplay IP services over wireless and wireline networks to telecom equipment manufacturers and global service providers.

Catapult’s 3G and 4G wireless networking test solutions provide solutions for testing the next generation network infrastructure and applications. These solutions are an excellent complement to Ixia’s existing line of IP performance test systems and post-deployment service verification platforms.

Catapult’s advanced wireless test systems deliver superior high-performance solutions for hundreds of protocols and variants, including LTE, IMS, UMTS, WiMAX, CDMA, VoIP, GPRS, GSM and SS7. Ixia uses large-scale protocol simulations that accurately model real-world subscriber behavior to test end-to-end networks and sub-systems. This approach accelerates service providers’ time to market with networks that can be deployed with confidence and quality.

“It’s essential that next-generation converged networks be tested from the edge through to the core in order to deliver excellent quality of experience to millions of subscribers,” said Atul Bhatnagar, President and CEO of Ixia. “With the addition of the Catapult line, Ixia will be able to help service providers create long-lasting customer loyalty and revenue acceleration in an unprecedented way.”