Research Note

Abstract

October 5, 2020 Sounds like the ska band Madness singer Suggs introducing Mavenir’s acquisition of IP.access! But this is not madness, this is finesse. With the tactical and rightly timed acquisition of ip.access on September 28, 2020, Mavenir plugged the small cell radio hole in its growing end-to-end software products and services portfolio. MAVENIR IS NOW A TRUE END-TO-END COMMUNICATIONS SOFTWARE SUPPLIER Radio was the only missing piece of the end-to-end portfolio puzzle and for that, Mavenir was working with a least 10 radio unit vendors and will continue to do so because ip.access is a small cell specialist who actually pioneered low power nodes for IP-based mobile networks when GSM started. Moreover, since announcing its open and virtual RAN strategy in the fall of 2018, Mavenir has been vocal about the urgent need to have cheaper radio units, particularly for macro networks, to accelerate the open RAN and vRAN market takeoff. This mounting need is even more pronounced in the indoor enterprise market segment and in the mobile operators’ demand to support 2G and 3G services that are not going away anytime soon. IP. ACCESS PIONEERED IP-BASED INDOOR GSM PICOCELLS Founded in 1999 and headquartered in Cambourne Business Park, Cambridge, UK, ip.access Limited started as a wholly-owned subsidiary of TTP Group PLC with the mission of developing technologies that enable IP communications between radios. It took 3 years for the company to achieve that goal: introduced in 2002, nanoGSM became the first IP base station controller (BSC) designed for indoor GSM networks. Based on 2G GSM picocell principles, this full IP-based BSC came with a central operation and maintenance management system that delivered voice, messaging and data to both 2G and 3G handsets within an indoor range of up to 200m. LightCounting subscribers can access the full text of this research note by logging into their accounts.