Open RAN vendor Mavenir acquired UK-headquartered small cell player ip.access for an undisclosed sum, a deal it claims will boost its offering for operators along with its private enterprise network credentials.
Mavenir is already serving 4G and 5G operators (including Vodafone Idea in India, Rakuten Mobile in Japan and Dish Network in the US) with open RAN kit but claims the market is now experiencing demand for equipment which can support older 2G and 3G networks.
Aniruddho Basu, SVP and GM of emerging business at Mavenir, told Mobile World Live that “recent geopolitical changes have seen an increasing focus on potential vendor landscape changes… this means there will be more imminent swapout opportunities and a higher possibility of introducing new vendors into the mix.”
For Mavenir to be able to capitalise on the banning of Chinese incumbents Huawei and ZTE in certain countries, it needs to be able to lean on ip.access’ technology to offer what Basu calls a “Multi-G network.”
“That makes us a much more compelling proposition as a single unified, single RAN provider.”
This is an approach that rival Parallel Wireless has also been pushing over the last year (Parallel’s marketing literature claims it is “the only US company challenging the world’s legacy vendors with the industry’s only unified ALL G – 5G/4G/3G/2G – software-enabled solution”). But Mavenir’s Basu argues Parallel Wireless is focused on the radio access side only, whereas Mavenir offers radio, core and OSS/BSS systems.
Integration
ip.access has a headcount of approximately 115 and was established around 2000. It is headquartered in Cambridge, UK, and has around 80 R&D staff in India. It is expected that the majority of staff will operate as a business unit within Mavenir’s Emerging Business group, although there may be minor reductions in duplicate admin/finance business areas.
Mavenir has around 4,000 employees and is headquartered in Texas, US.
Mavenir and ip.access are no strangers, having already worked together on the first live 4G open RAN network site in the UK, at the Royal Welsh Showground events venue [1].
For Mavenir, the acquisition represents the latest move to shake up the traditional network vendor market with new open RAN kit. The likes of Mavenir and Parallel Wireless claim open RAN offers operators a cost saving of almost 40 per cent over five years, as well as greater supplier choice and flexibility in network buildout.
A recent whitepaper from Mobile World Live, written on behalf of Mavenir [2], noted: “Open RAN’s advocates are welcoming the fact that operators could choose to use products from different vendors at the same base station. In the future, base stations will be transformed in the way that mobile phones were transformed operators will be able to tap into the network infrastructure equivalent of an app store in order to deliver different services.”
Private Enterprise
As well as the heavily hyped open RAN market, Mavenir’s Basu also said the deal will extend the vendor’s footprint in the enterprise and industry segments, particularly private networks (using OnGo/CBRS systems). “It’s essential we had a much more well-rounded portfolio that included small cells,” he explained, adding that ip.access has new customers to offer in vertical industries such as maritime and aviation.
Analyst reaction
Head of GSMA Intelligence Peter Jarich summed up the deal: “More than anything, this underscores two realities of Open RAN,” he told Mobile World Live. “First, that 2G and 3G matter; the industry may be focused on the value that 4G and 5G solutions can bring, but operators still have legacy technologies in the field and those need to be a part of open RAN strategies (as vendors like Parallel Wireless have argued). Second, that open RAN may be the easiest/quickest fit in enterprise or private deployments where greenfield deployments have less legacy or integration baggage and can be justified by specific use cases.”
[1] https://www.mobileworldlive.com/featured-content/home-banner/vodafone-uk-ups-ante-with-live-open-ran-site
[2] https://www.mobileworldlive.com/rewriting-the-infrastructure-rulebook-with-openran
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