Tarana Wireless Secures $170 Million

<p><strong>MILPITAS<&sol;strong> &&num;8212&semi; Tarana Wireless has raised &dollar;170 million at a &dollar;1 billion valuation from venture and institutional investors to support its rapid growth&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>The round was co-led by Axon Capital&comma; Khosla Ventures&comma; and Prime Movers Lab&period; Also participating were Michigan State Pension Fund&comma; I Squared Capital&comma; and two other large&comma; industry-leading institutional investors&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>Tarana operates the G1 platform — which delivers fiber-class internet service at a fraction of fiber’s cost and complexity&period; The company says it will earn more than &dollar;100 million in revenue in 2022&comma; from a customer base of over 120 service providers&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>&OpenCurlyDoubleQuote;The key ingredient driving our rapid expansion is overwhelming customer demand for G1&comma; the world’s most advanced fixed wireless access &lpar;FWA&rpar; platform&comma;” noted Tarana CEO Basil Alwan&period; &OpenCurlyDoubleQuote;Like fiber&comma; G1 delivers ultra-fast internet service with impressive upstream and downstream speeds&comma; but with dramatic improvements in both cost and time to deploy&period; Finally&comma; true high-speed broadband can be delivered to anyone&comma; anywhere — rapidly and economically&period;”<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>Beyond water and electricity&comma; affordable&comma; high-speed internet access has become the most important utility for households the world over&period; Outside of the relatively small percentage of global homes that have access to upgraded cable&comma; fiber has been the most viable new technology for reliable&comma; high-speed internet&period; Unfortunately&comma; fiber is throttled by high installation costs and project complexity&comma; leading to long deployment timelines and a focus on high-density&comma; high-income markets&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>Alternatives to fiber have been challenged&period; Older cable systems suffer from inadequate upstream speeds and generally poor performance&period; Other options include sub-par DSL and prior generations of fixed wireless access that require line-of-sight to achieve reasonable speeds&period; And while later generations of satellites have shown vast improvements&comma; they too have limitations&period; Satellite guru Greg Wyler&comma; also a Tarana investor&comma; noted&comma; &OpenCurlyDoubleQuote;While satellite-based services serve an important need&comma; they lack the aggregate capacity required to support high performance in mainstream broadband markets&period; G1 offers transformational speed and quality&comma; even in unlicensed spectrum&period; It is something you have to see to believe&period;”<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>Providing service with Tarana’s G1 platform is remarkably simple&period; An internet provider mounts four briefcase-sized &OpenCurlyDoubleQuote;base node” radios on a tower&comma; and these can deliver consistent high-performance internet with up to gigabit-class speeds and low latency for as many as 1&comma;000 customers within a few-miles radius&period; They can also be configured to provide symmetric upstream and downstream rates as an option&period; All customers need is a &OpenCurlyDoubleQuote;remote node” radio the size of a hardcover textbook installed on their house&comma; which can connect to a base node even without clear line of sight between the radios&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>G1 early adopters include large&comma; established telecom service providers such as MTN&comma; BT&comma; and Liberty&semi; new entrants on the broadband scene &lpar;not yet public&rpar;&semi; and a fast-growing number of innovative wireless internet service providers including Wisper Internet&comma; Redzone&comma; and Resound Networks&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>Resound CEO Tyson Curtis&comma; summarizing their experience with G1&comma; said&comma; &OpenCurlyDoubleQuote;The platform cuts the cost and timeline of our network deployments in half while delivering 6x more capacity per tower and 3x higher end-subscriber speeds&period; It supports full-scale entry into large markets that are impossible to serve with any other FWA technology&period;”<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>Tarana’s investors have seen clearly the full promise of this simple to deploy&comma; revolutionary technology&colon;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>&OpenCurlyDoubleQuote;We invested early in Tarana&comma; and the company’s fast start in the past year with the G1 platform is impressive&comma;” said Samir Kaul&comma; founding partner and managing director at Khosla Ventures&period; &OpenCurlyDoubleQuote;Tarana’s advances in network economics&comma; performance&comma; and deployment speed create a real path to radically altering the broadband provider market&period;”<&sol;p>&NewLine;

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