M/A-Com Sells Unit to Hughes Aircraft

M/A-Com Inc. has sold its MTEL telecommunications division to Hughes Aircraft Co. for an undisclosed amount, the companies said Monday.

About 350 of M/A-Com’s 1,000 San Diego-based employees will be affected by the sale. Company spokesmen were unable, however, to say whether layoffs will occur.

MTEL supplies equipment and systems for commercial satellite and terrestrial communications. Hughes Aircraft is a unit of General Motors Corp.

The deal will not affect M/A-Com’s government business in San Diego.

“Our commercial business is larger than our government business, but most of our commercial sales come from East Coast operations and most of our government sales come from West Coast,” according to M/A-Com spokesman Joseph Bothwell.

Hughes has manufactured more than half of the commercial communications satellites now in service.

Burlington, Mass.-based M/A-Com last year sold its San Diego-based video products business to New York-based General Instruments Corp. as part of an ongoing repositioning. The MTEL sale “should be the last major announcement we’ll be making,” Bothwell said.