Just when I thought I had ADC Telecommunications (NASDAQ:ADCT) figured out, it throws a spanner in the works. Prior to the start of trading on Wednesday, ADC announced that it had reached an agreement to acquire wireless infrastructure specialist Andrew Corp. (NASDAQ:ANDW) in an all-stock deal. ADC also announced earnings Wednesday, and there will be a Motley Fool Take on those tomorrow, so stay tuned.

With the deal at hand, ADC is offering 0.57 shares for each Andrew share. That values Andrew at about a 30% premium to Monday's closing price, though ADC shares are likely to decline today and shrink that premium a bit. All in all, you're talking about a roughly $2 billion deal that will create a company with strong market positions in wireless infrastructure (particularly antennae and base station subsystems) and so-called "last mile" connectivity products.

This deal is kinda strange to me on at least one level. While I freely admit that I haven't spent every day of the past few years following ADC, I thought the company had been following a rather focused and coherent plan -- shedding non-core business and really dialing in on the infrastructure connectivity business. And to that end, I thought it had a pretty good share in segments like copper, fiber, and enterprise connectivity.

And now it adds a business that is completely different and has minimal overlap. What's more, Andrew's recent growth and margins haven't been all that robust. Not surprisingly, the stock has been pretty weak.

On the flipside, the combination is definitely a more diversified company -- perhaps giving rise to the opportunity to cross-sell with customers like Cingular, Nortel (NYSE:NT), Verizon (NYSE:VZ), and so on. And it's also a larger company -- perhaps giving a bit more insulation from the cyclical nature of these markets and the bargaining power of major customers.

I was definitely warming up to ADC in recent months, but this move strikes me as something akin to adding a bag of ice cubes to a nice warm bath -- it's an unpleasant initial shock and it cools my overall enthusiasm. Maybe there's more potential to this deal than I'm seeing here at first blush, but it doesn't initially strike me as a great use of shareholder capital.

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Fool contributor Stephen Simpson has no financial interest in any stocks mentioned (that means he's neither long nor short the shares).