Ubiquisys, the Swindon developer of 3G and LTE intelligent small cells, has raised $19m.
The funding will be used to accelerate delivery of its range of tri-mode 3G/LTE/Wi-Fi Public Small Cell Hotspots.
"Public access small cells require extremely high performance, resilience and fully automatic, adaptive capabilities," says Chris Gilbert, CEO of 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."
Ubiquisys has shipped 50,000 public small cells globally for use by operators such as Softbank (Japan), Network Norway and SFR (France).
The new funding comes from new investors Mobile Internet Capital and Nissay Capital, together with existing investors including Accel Partners, Advent Venture Partners, Atlas Venture, 5CCG/Sallfort Privatbank AG and Yasuda.
Ranked No.1 by ABI Research in its Indoor Small Cells Vendor Matrix 2012, Ubiquisys is building on its leadership position in residential and enterprise femtocells, where its adaptive radio technology been adopted by more than 70 operators.
Mobile service providers are experiencing unprecedented growth in mobile data consumption, while macro network augmentation, spectrum additions and LTE can only meet a fraction of the extra capacity needed to meet demand.
So 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 co-operation is fully proven.
Ubiquisys' technology, developed in collaboration with 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 content, cloud applications and core networking capabilities to the edge of the network.
