Boston Communications Group, Inc., more commonly called bcgi, was one of the largest

prepaid mobile phone A prepaid mobile device, also known as a, pay-as-you-go (PAYG), pay-as-you-talk, pay and go, go-phone, prepay or burner phone, is a mobile device such as a phone for which credit is purchased in advance of service use. The purchased credit is ...

companies in the United States until 2007. In 2005, they settled a patent lawsuit brought by Freedom Wireless, a private intellectual property firm based in

Phoenix, Arizona Phoenix ( ; nv, Hoozdo; es, Fénix or , yuf-x-wal, Banyà:nyuwá) is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Arizona, with 1,608,139 residents as of 2020. It is the fifth-most populous city in the United States, and the on ...

. bcgi and its co-defendant had lost a jury trial, which awarded Freedom $128 million in damages. The co-defendants agreed to collectively pay $87 million, of which bcgi's share was $55 million. The stock price jumped from $2.09 to $4.01 upon news of the settlement, because the lawsuit threatened to drive the company into bankruptcy. On July 12, 2007, Megasoft Ltd. of

Hyderabad, India Hyderabad ( ; , ) is the capital and largest city of the Indian state of Telangana and the '' de jure'' capital of Andhra Pradesh. It occupies on the Deccan Plateau along the banks of the Musi River, in the northern part of Southern In ...

agreed to purchase bcgi in a

tender offer In corporate finance, a tender offer is a type of public takeover bid. The tender offer is a public, open offer or invitation (usually announced in a newspaper advertisement) by a prospective acquirer to all stockholders of a publicly traded corp ...

, which was settled a few months later.

References

Mobile phone companies of the United States {{telecom-company-stub