Arris acquires Pace for $2.1 billion

The American manufacturer acquires the British company, thus fully entering the satellite solutions segment.

Arris Group has announced an agreement to acquire the British company Pace in an operation estimated at 2.1 billion dollars. Once the purchase is completed, a new company will be born that will operate under the name New Arris.

Based in Georgia (United States), Arris specializes in the manufacturing of telecommunications equipment such as modems, decoders and other solutions for cable television. Now, after this operation with Pace, it will fully enter the satellite solutions market.

Since acquiring its Motorola Home division from Google in 2013, Arris has opted for its strategy of diversifying its product portfolio, until now mainly concentrated in the cable industry.

Arris Chairman and CEO Bob Stanzione commented: "This transaction is another example of Arris' ongoing strategy of investing in the right opportunities to position our company for growth. The addition of Pace, with its products and customer base, will provide Arris with a large-scale entry into the satellite segment, expanding our portfolio and global presence. We expect this merger will allow Arris to increase its speed of innovation. Pace is a great company with a strong track record of pioneering innovation and excellent customer service. Through a combination of organic development and acquisitions, Pace has grown to become a provider of technology solutions for pay TV and broadband in cable, satellite and telecommunications around the world.”

ActiveVideo

Coinciding with NAB 2015, Arris announced another purchase, in this case ActiveVideo with Charter Communications through a joint venture. Arris will own 65% of the joint venture and will be the sales channel for ActiveVideo's CloudTV platform. The closing of the transaction is expected to occur in the second quarter once the legal procedures related to Competition have been completed.

ActiveVideo is the developer of CloudTV, a cloud-based software platform that enables service providers, content aggregators, and consumer electronics manufacturers to rapidly deploy new services by virtualizing consumer premises equipment and the cloud. CloudTV enables the delivery of next-generation user interfaces, online content and interactive television advertising to millions of set-top boxes and connected devices.