NII Holdings , Inc. announced yesterday in a press release that it has made a formal agreement to sell its Peruvian mobile operations, specifically Nextel del Peru to Empresa Nacional de Telecomunicaciones S.A. (otherwise known as ENTEL) for approximately $400 million .

According to NII, the move was made due to a strategy shift within the company, that will attempt to focus the majority of their capital and resources to Mexico and Brazil, which are currently the company’s two largest markets. The profit mad from this sale should provide some wiggle room for NII, giving them substantial added liquidity to invest in next-generation networks in their other markets

According to Steve Shindler, NII’s Chairman and interim CEO, “The sale of Nextel Peru is an important step in the evolution of our business and aligns with our strategic goal of increasing value for stockholders through focused investments on our new next generation network deployments. The proceeds that we generate through this sale allow us to prioritize investments in our largest markets that offer the greatest opportunity for strong, long-term returns.”  

“Nextel Peru has been an integral part of NII for fifteen years, and led the way on a number of key initiatives, including being the first of our markets to implement our new billing system and the first to deploy and launch our new next generation network and high performance push-to-talk service,” added Shindler.  “We are grateful to all of our Peru employees and expect that Nextel Peru’s outstanding management team will continue to thrive under Entel’s direction.”

The closing of the whole deal is still subject to certain conditions, and is expected to be completed later this year.

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