With wireless gadgets proliferating and all kinds of multimedia services
racing
to make a name for themselves even before most people start
using the devices, telecom carriers are girding to beef up
infrastructure to handle massive increases in volume.
Christmas season this year will surely flood the market with new devices,
and particularly put them in the hands of a population with time on its
hands and the capability to take full advantage of the full array of
bandwidth-hungry applications now being rolled out, so many are
expecting heavy carrier spending on infrastructure in early 2009. That's what nine-year-old BridgeWave Communications Inc. is counting
on after closing a $10 million fourth and final venture capital
round
to boost sales and marketing of high bandwidth radio devices to help
carriers relieve traffic in the cellular backhaul network that routes
calls out of the air and into core telecommunications networks.
BridgeWave raised the money from new investor Core Capital along with
previous strategic backer Intel Capital as lead investors, along with
other previous investors Cipio Partners, SDL Ventures, and Merifin
Capital.
"Data usage on mobile devices is growing exponentially, particularly
with mobile video, and networks are getting more and more clogged,"
says Pascal Luck, a managing director with Core Capital. "The area
BridgeWave plays in is specifically in mobile backhaul, and that is
going to be one of the largest areas of spending."
Despite the seemingly straightforward term, not all wireless backhaul
is actually wireless. Many carriers have put in fiber optic cable to
speed the transport of backhaul from cell sites to the network, while
most "wireless" wireless backhaul systems use WiMax or microwave
equipment which are slower than fiber optics.
BrdgeWave adapted proprietary radio technology from the now collapsed
Local Multipoint Distribution Point (LMDS) market after recapitalizing
in 2003, and aimed its ultra high-speed products at the enterprise
market and systems for video surveillance and other high bandwidth
applications. Now it is aiming at major telecom carriers to use its in
backhaul functions operating at speeds comparable to fiber optic,
but at potentially much lower cost.
"We were approaching profitability, but given that we are now going
after Tier 1 carriers, we decided to get some dry powder," says
BridgeWave co-founder and CEO Amir Makleff.
-- Clifford Carlsen
See June 25 post from Tech Confidential
See June 25 press release from BridgeWave Communications
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