LM Ericsson of Sweden said Wednesday it plans to buy Nortel Networks Corp.'s North American GSM business for $70 million in cash.
Ericsson said it made its bid for Nortel's GSM assets with Kapsch CarrierCom AG of Austria. As part of the deal, Ericsson is acquiring assets of Nortel's GSM business in North America, while Kapsch is paying $33 million to buy most of the remaining assets outside North America.
Telecommunications equipment maker Nortel, which is under bankruptcy protection, has already sold the majority of its wireless network business to Ericsson for $1.13 billion. That deal covered the older CDMA and newer LTE wireless businesses of Nortel's Carrier Networks unit.
CDMA, or code division multiple access, is a rival standard to the dominant GSM, or global system for mobile. LTE, or long-term evolution, is a next-generation wireless network technology that promises to be much faster.
In the U.S., GSM is used by AT&T among other wireless carriers.