Ubiquisys today announced it has raised $19m in an oversubscribed round from new investors Mobile Internet Capital and Nissay Capital, together with existing investors including 5CCG/Sallfort Privatbank AG, Accel Partners, Advent Venture Partners, Atlas Venture and Yasuda. Ranked #1 by ABI Research in its Indoor Small Cells Vendor Matrix 2012, Ubiquisys will use the capital to generate further profitable growth and accelerate delivery of innovative tri-mode 3G/LTE/WiFi small cell hotspots. The company is building on its leadership position in residential and enterprise femtocells, where its adaptive radio technology has underpinned successful high volume deployments, working with more than 70 operators across the world.
Mobile service providers are experiencing unprecedented growth in mobile data consumption, as consumers across the world embrace the benefits of smartphones in vast numbers. Macro network augmentation, spectrum additions and LTE can only meet a fraction of the extra capacity needed to meet consumer expectations. As a result, small cell deployments in public spaces, incorporating combinations of 3G, LTE and WiFi, are forecast to grow very rapidly, as they multiply the capacity of mobile networks whilst driving down costs. Indoor public spaces such as cafes, malls, transport hubs and office public spaces are the immediate opportunity for this type of small cell technology. Indoor is where most mobile data is consumed, where there is abundant low-cost fixed broadband for backhaul, where there are millions of available sites serving WiFi today, and where macro network cooperation is fully proven.
Ubiquisys’ technology, developed in collaboration with leading companies including Texas Instruments and Broadcom, is increasingly being selected by operators to fulfill these needs and open new commercial opportunities. Working with Intel, Ubiquisys has pioneered the smart cell: part small cell hotspot, part powerful computing platform. This new class of small cell moves rich content, cloud applications and core networking capabilities right to the edge of the network, transforming the mobile user experience.
“Public access small cells require extremely high performance, resilience and fully automatic, adaptive capabilities. By building on the heritage of our volume residential and enterprise deployments, we are able to provide solutions which can meet the rigorous demands of operators in public spaces,” said Chris Gilbert, CEO Ubiquisys. “We remain uniquely placed to benefit from the ongoing exceptional growth in the small cell market and welcome this investment to help us meet this demand.”