ip.access Limited is a

multinational corporation A multinational company (MNC), also referred to as a multinational enterprise (MNE), a transnational enterprise (TNE), a transnational corporation (TNC), an international corporation or a stateless corporation with subtle but contrasting senses, i ...

that designs, manufactures, and markets

small cell Small cells are low-powered cellular radio access nodes that operate in licensed and unlicensed spectrum that have a range of 10 meters to a few kilometers. In other words, they are base stations with low power consumption and cheap cost that ...

s ( picocell and femtocell) technologies and infrastructure equipment for GSM,

GPRS General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) is a packet oriented mobile data standard on the 2G and 3G cellular communication network's global system for mobile communications (GSM). GPRS was established by European Telecommunications Standards Inst ...

EDGE Edge or EDGE may refer to: Technology Computing * Edge computing, a network load-balancing system * Edge device, an entry point to a computer network * Adobe Edge, a graphical development application * Microsoft Edge, a web browser developed b ...

, 3G, 4G and 5G. The company was acquired by Mavenir, the cloud-native software supplier to the communication service provider in September 2020. ip.access has headquarters in

Cambourne Cambourne is a new settlement and civil parish in Cambridgeshire, England, in the district of South Cambridgeshire. It lies on the A428 road between Cambridge, 9 miles (14 km) to the east, and St Neots and Bedford to the west. It comprise ...

, England, the company also maintains offices in Gurgaon and

Pune Pune (; ; also known as Poona, ( the official name from 1818 until 1978) is one of the most important industrial and educational hubs of India, with an estimated population of 7.4 million As of 2021, Pune Metropolitan Region is the largest i ...

, India. ip.access combines IP and cellular technologies together to provide 2G, 3G and LTE coverage and for mobile networks. Using

satellite A satellite or artificial satellite is an object intentionally placed into orbit in outer space. Except for passive satellites, most satellites have an electricity generation system for equipment on board, such as solar panels or radioiso ...

backhaul, its products provide coverage to commercial passenger aircraft, ships,Mobiles Connect Across the Waves
''BBC News'', February 2, 2009. and users in remote rural areas. The firm is a member of 3GPP, CBRS Alliance,

European Telecommunications Standards Institute The European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) is an independent, not-for-profit, standardization organization in the field of information and communications. ETSI supports the development and testing of global technical standard ...

(ETSI), Having previously been an individual member of the

Telecom Infra Project The Telecom Infra Project (TIP) was formed in 2016 as an engineering-focused, collaborative methodology for building and deploying global telecom network infrastructure, with the goal of enabling global access for all. TIP is jointly steered by it ...

, following its acquisition, ip.access continues to be involved through Mavenir's membership.

History

ip.access was founded in December 1999 as a wholly owned subsidiary of TTP Group PLC aimed at developing technologies that would allow multiple radio access technologies to communicate over the Internet. To accommodate its growing staff, in 2006 ip.access relocated to new offices in Cambourne Business Park, Cambridge, where it remains. In October 2000, TTP Group spun off its communications division (TTP Communications, or TTPCom) in an

initial public offering An initial public offering (IPO) or stock launch is a public offering in which shares of a company are sold to institutional investors and usually also to retail (individual) investors. An IPO is typically underwritten by one or more investme ...

on the

London Stock Exchange London Stock Exchange (LSE) is a stock exchange in the City of London, England, United Kingdom. , the total market value of all companies trading on LSE was £3.9 trillion. Its current premises are situated in Paternoster Square close to St Pa ...

, and ip.access joined the spin-off as a wholly owned subsidiary of the TTPCom group. In March 2006, the company secured an £8.5 million round of funding from

Intel Capital Intel Capital is a division of Intel Corporation, set up to manage corporate venture capital, global investment, mergers and acquisitions. Intel Capital makes equity investments in a range of technology startups and companies offering hardware, ...

, Scottish Equity Partners, and Rothschild & Cie Banque. As part of its June 2006 acquisition of TTP Communications,

Motorola Motorola, Inc. () was an American multinational telecommunications company based in Schaumburg, Illinois, United States. After having lost $4.3 billion from 2007 to 2009, the company split into two independent public companies, Motorola ...

also gained a stake in ip.access. In 2007, after signing an OEM agreement with ip.access, ADC (now part of Tyco Electronics) made a minority interest investment in the company. Followed by, both

Cisco Cisco Systems, Inc., commonly known as Cisco, is an American-based multinational corporation, multinational digital communications technology conglomerate (company), conglomerate corporation headquartered in San Jose, California. Cisco develo ...

Systems and Qualcomm making strategic financial investments in the company in 2008. In July 2007, the firm became a founding member of the Femto Forum, renamed Small Cell Forum in February 2012,. ip.access was named in

The Sunday Times ''The Sunday Times'' is a British newspaper whose circulation makes it the largest in Britain's quality press market category. It was founded in 1821 as ''The New Observer''. It is published by Times Newspapers Ltd, a subsidiary of News UK, wh ...

Fast

Tech Track 100 The Sunday Times Tech Track 100 is an annual league table published in association with The Sunday Times newspaper in the UK. It ranks Britain’s 100 private technology (TMT) companies with the fastest-growing sales over their last three years. ...

in both 20072007 Tech Track 100 League Table - UK
, The Sunday Times Fast Tech Track 100. Retrieved June 8, 2011. and 2008.2008 Tech Track 100 League Table - UK
, The Sunday Times Fast Tech Track 100. Retrieved June 8, 2011. The company was also cited as the number one picocell vendor by global market intelligence company, ABI Research in 2008. In 2009, ip.access was named in the

Deloitte Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited (), commonly referred to as Deloitte, is an international professional services network headquartered in London, England. Deloitte is the largest professional services network by revenue and number of professio ...

Technology Fast 500

EMEA EMEA is a shorthand designation meaning Europe, the Middle East and Africa. The acronym is used by institutions and governments, as well as in marketing and business when referring to this region: it is a shorthand way of referencing the two ...

.2009 Winners
, Deloitte. Retrieved June 8, 2011. In April 2009, the company announced its Oyster 3G product would support femtocell standards published by 3GPP and the

Broadband Forum The Broadband Forum is a non-profit industry consortium dedicated to developing broadband network specifications. Members include telecommunications networking and service provider companies, broadband device and equipment vendors, consultants a ...

.Bhushan, Amarendra
ip.access Demonstrates Progress on Femtocell Standards
, ''CEOWorld Magazine'', April 07, 2009. In March 2010, the company took part in the first

Plugfest A plugtest or plugfest is an event based on a certain technical standard where the designers of electronic equipment or software test the interoperability of their products or designs with those of other manufacturers. It could be literally plugging ...

, organized by ETSI as part of its Plugtests program, held to demonstrate the effectiveness of the 3GPP femtocell standards in supporting interoperability between femtocell access points and network equipment from different vendors. In June 2011, the market research and analysis firm Infonetics named ip.access along with its partner Cisco Systems, as the leading supplier of 3G femtocells. In August 2011, ip.access announced it had made more than 500,000 installations of its 3G technologies. In February 2013, ip.access announced it had become the first 3G small cell provider to ship one million residential units. In the same month, ip.access and completed successful interoperability testing of 3G small cells over IP Satellite. In February 2014, ip.access launched a new range of small cells called presenceCell, which unlike traditional small cells, do not rely on providing indoor coverage and capacity to deliver a return on investment. Rather, the ultra-compact base stations are designed to capture anonymous user location and phone identity information from smartphones, which can be analysed and packaged as a service for a variety of businesses. Private equity fund Zouk Capital invested in ip.access in July 2015 alongside Amadeus Capital Partners. In August 2015, ip.access was named as a partner in the

European Commission The European Commission (EC) is the executive of the European Union (EU). It operates as a cabinet government, with 27 members of the Commission (informally known as "Commissioners") headed by a President. It includes an administrative body ...

-funded €8 million

Horizon 2020 The Framework Programmes for Research and Technological Development, also called Framework Programmes or abbreviated FP1 to FP9, are funding programmes created by the European Union/European Commission to support and foster research in the Europea ...

Project SESAME. Led by

Hellenic Telecommunications Organisation OTE is the national telecommunications provider of Greece. OTE may also refer to: * Ocean thermal energy conversion, a renewable energy source * Oda of Haldensleben (978–1023), daughter of the Margrave of the North March, Theoderich * On-tar ...

(OTE) the project's remit was to develop virtualised cloud-enabled, multi-operator, 5G radio access infrastructure and services. In February, 2016. ip.access launched its Viper platform to provide end-to-end connectivity and management for small cells. nanoVirt, a virtualised small cell gateway which integrates 2G, 3G and 4G small cell management and access control functions and can run on a carrier-grade Virtual Machine (VM) environment or hosted in a third-party data centre was announced in May 2016. Ip.access has deployed more than 2 million small cells globally which are used by mobile operators to densify their networks to improve network coverage and/or capacity. Small cells are also the foundation for private network use cases based on spectrum sharing such as CBRS in the United States. AeroMobile and SITAONAIR use ip.access small cells combined with satellite backhaul to provide cellular coverage on commercial and private aircraft. The company also supplies maritime solutions on freight vessels and cruise liners working with partners such as Pentonet, SpeedCast and Telecom26. Ip.access has also provided small cells connected over satellite as rapid deployment disaster response systems. Ip.access small cell solution have also been deployed in Africa, Asia, and Latin America to provide connectivity to rural and remote communities and reduce the digital divide.

Acquisition by Mavenir

On September 27, 2020 ip.access was acquired by Mavenir, the supplier of cloud-native network software to communication service providers. The acquisition allowed the integration of ip.access’ 2G and 3G technologies into Mavenir's existing 4G and 5G OpenRAN portfolio broadband suite and also extend its reach into the enterprise market for private wireless networks based on 3GPP technologies such as 4G/LTE and 5G. The sale of ip.access Ltd to Mavenir was led by the ip.access management team; Richard Staveley (CEO), Nick Johnson (CTO & Founder), Neil Winrow (COO) and Laura Lawrence (CFO). The two companies had worked together to deliver Vodafone UK's first Open RAN site at the Royal Welsh Showground in Builth Wells in August 2020. In November 2020, Mavenir announced the establishment of an OpenRAN Centre of Innovation to be centred at the ip.access headquarters in Cambridge, UK.

Products

The telecommunications firms

AT&T AT&T Inc. is an American multinational telecommunications holding company headquartered at Whitacre Tower in Downtown Dallas, Texas. It is the world's largest telecommunications company by revenue and the third largest provider of mobile tel ...

Saabedra, Humberto
AT&T to Deploy Femtocell Technology from UK Firm ip.access
''Phone News'', May 1, 2008. uses Oyster 3G as the core femtocell technology for its 3G MicroCell product.

Cisco Systems Cisco Systems, Inc., commonly known as Cisco, is an American-based multinational corporation, multinational digital communications technology conglomerate (company), conglomerate corporation headquartered in San Jose, California. Cisco develo ...

,Donegan, Michelle
Cisco, ip.access Prep Femto Combo
''Light Reading Mobile'', May 13, 2008. has jointly developed a femtocell solution with ip.access in compliance with the Broadband Forum's TR-069 technical specification.

nanoGSM

In 2002, ip.access introduced the world's first IP basestation controller for indoor GSM networks. nanoGSM uses 2G picocells that leverage the standard GSM air interface, full IP-based

BSC A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for programs that generally last three to five years. The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Science was the University of ...

, and an OMC-R management system that delivers voice, messaging and data to both 2G and 3G handsets at an indoor range of up to 200m.

nano3G

nano3G is an end-to-end femtocell system with access points for Enterprise, E-class 8, E16 and E24and Small Medium Business, S-class 8 access controller and element management system, providing carrier-class coverage to commercial and consumer users.

Oyster 3G Technology

Launched at the 2007 3GSM World Congress in

Barcelona Barcelona ( , , ) is a city on the coast of northeastern Spain. It is the capital and largest city of the autonomous community of Catalonia, as well as the second most populous municipality of Spain. With a population of 1.6 million within ...

, Spain, the Oyster 3G is ip.access' core 3G femtocell technology used by

system integrator A systems integrator (or system integrator) is a person or company that specializes in bringing together component subsystems into a whole and ensuring that those subsystems function together, a practice known as system integration. They also sol ...

s and OEM customers to integrate

WCDMA The Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) is a third generation mobile cellular system for networks based on the GSM standard. Developed and maintained by the 3GPP (3rd Generation Partnership Project), UMTS is a component of the I ...

femtocells into home gateways, set-top boxes, and other devices. ip.access' Oyster 3G is the core technology of AT&T's 3G MicroCell

nanoLTE

nanoLTE -40, E-60, E-100is an Enterprise grade platform that brings LTE capacity both in-doors and in public spaces, while also offering the option of providing extra 3G infill and Circuit Switch Fall Back (CSFB) capacity.

presenceCell

Launched in 2014, the presenceCell is a new range of small cell, designed to capture precise user location data via their smart phone, which can be analysed and packaged as a service for a variety of businesses. In addition to the presenceCell, ip.access also provides the back-end processing and management system that delivers the Presence data anonymously and securely to vertical application providers. The company's Network Orchestration System serves as the infrastructure management solution and also supports the GSMA's OneAPI standard, which allows third parties to provide value-added services through web friendly message interfaces. The presenceCell was commercially deployed by Vodafone Turkey in 2015. In January 2017, ip.access entered into a strategic partnership with wireless network analytics company Inovva to enhance the Presence offering.

Viper

Viper is a virtualised, in-premises enterprise 3G/4G radio access network platform launched in February 2016 that can be deployed by mobile operators or enterprises to offer indoor coverage through a “small cells as a service” (ScaaS) business model. In May 2017, ip.access announced the updating of the Viper2020 Cloud Managed Small Cell platform to support 5G, first responders and neutral host networks with Presence.

SoHo Access Point

The S-60, announced in February 2016, is ip.access’ first freestanding low-cost 4G/LTE access point designed for small offices and retailers.

4G Access Control Gateway

Also launched in February 2016, the 4G Access Control Gateway provides mobile operators with a single interface between their existing core network and LTE small cells.

nanoVirt Small Cell Gateway

nanoVirt, launched in May 2016, is a software solution that integrates 2G, 3G and 4G small cell management and access control functions as virtualized components that can be deployed by mobile operators and neutral hosts on their preferred Virtual Machine server hardware or third-party data centre.

E62 multi-RAT platform

Announced in February 2019, the E62 is a multi-Radio Access Technology 3G/4G platform that is software-upgradable to 5G.

nanoCBRS

nanoCBRS is an OnGo certified solution for the deployment of private LTE networks in the 3.5 GHz band. Launched in October 2019, the solution incorporates Citizens Band Radio Devices, a suite of architectures – nanoViNE - to support use cases and nanoCBRSLab, a mobile network lab solution for testing.

Customers and Partners

Among ip.access' major customers are

Batelco BTC is the primary telecommunications provider for the Bahamas, headquartered in Nassau, New Providence. It is partly government owned and offers telephone, internet and wireless services. BTC is an initialism for the Bahamas Telecommunications ...

Bharti Airtel Bharti Airtel Limited, commonly known as ( d/b/a) Airtel, is an Indian multinational telecommunications services company based in New Delhi. It operates in 18 countries across South Asia and Africa, as well as the Channel Islands. Curr ...

, Blue Ocean Wireless, Bouygues Telecom, Caribsat,

Digicel Digicel is a Jamaican and Caribbean mobile phone network and home entertainment provider operating in 33 markets worldwide. Digicel has operated in several countries, including Guyana, Fiji, Haiti, Trinidad and Tobago, St. Lucia, Suriname, and ...

Globe A globe is a spherical model of Earth, of some other celestial body, or of the celestial sphere. Globes serve purposes similar to maps, but unlike maps, they do not distort the surface that they portray except to scale it down. A model glo ...

, Jersey Telecom Monaco Telecom,

O2 (UK) O₂ UK (legally incorporated as Telefonica UK Limited, stylized as O₂) is a British telecommunications services provider, headquartered in Slough, England. It operates under the O2 brand. It is owned by Virgin Media O2, a 50:50 joint vent ...

, SFR,ip.access, SFR Business Team and SPIE Collaborate to Bring Picocells to French Market
''TMCNet.com'', February 3, 2009.

SPIE SA SPIE SA, corporately styled Spie, is a French company specializing in the fields of electrical, mechanical and climatic engineering, energy and communication networks. Its business is the production, operation and maintenance assistance for indus ...

T-Mobile T-Mobile is the brand name used by some of the mobile communications subsidiaries of the German telecommunications company Deutsche Telekom AG in the Czech Republic ( T-Mobile Czech Republic), Poland ( T-Mobile Polska), the United States ( T-Mob ...

Tele2 Tele2 AB is a Swedish telecommunications operator headquartered in the Kista Science City, Stockholm, Sweden. It is a major telephone operator in Sweden, Russia, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Tele2 also has a 25% share in T-Mobile Netherlan ...

, Telefónica O2 Czech Republic,

Telenet Telenet was an American commercial packet-switched network which went into service in 1975. It was the first FCC-licensed public data network in the United States. Various commercial and government interests paid monthly fees for dedicated line ...

Telia Sonera Telia Company AB is a Swedish multinational telecommunications company and mobile network operator present in Sweden, Finland, Norway, Denmark, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Telia also owns TV4 Media which includes TV4 in Sweden, MTV Oy in Fi ...

, Vivacom and

Vodafone Vodafone Group Public limited company, plc () is a British Multinational corporation, multinational Telephone company, telecommunications company. Its registered office and Headquarters, global headquarters are in Newbury, Berkshire, England. It ...

. The company's technology partners include AeroMobile, Africa Mobile Networks, Altobridge, Blue Ocean Wireless, Cisco Systems, Druid Software, Intel, Pentonet, Private Mobile Networks, Qualcomm, Quortus,Harris, Jan
3G Femtocell Developer Kit Available From ip.access
''TechWatch'', February 05, 2010. Setcom, and TriaGnoSys.

Awards

Corporate, product, and personnel awards won by ip.access include the following:

2007

* Light Reading Leading Lights Awards - Best New Product (Private Company) * Global Mobile Awards - Best Radio Access Product or Service * The Sunday Times Fast Tech Track 100 * World Communications Award - Best Technology Foresight

2008

* The Sunday Times Fast Tech Track 100

2009

* Deloitte Fast 500 EMEA * Femto Forum Awards - Femtocell or Femtocell Network Element Design and Technology Innovation * Femto Forum Awards - Femtocell Service (Commercial, Prototype, or Demo) * Global Telecoms Business Innovation Awards - Maritime Voice Services

2010

* GTB Power100 * World Vendor Awards - Best Specialist Vendor

2011

* Femto Forum Awards - Femtocell Network Element Design and Technology Innovation

2012

* World Vendor Awards - Small Cell Award * Small Cell Forum Industry Awards - Judges Choice Award

2013

* Small Cell Forum Industry Awards - Social Vision, promoting Small Cells for Social / Economical / Environmental development

2014

* Small Cell Forum Industry Awards - Social Impact, promoting small cells for social/economic/environmental development.

2015

* Small Cell Forum Industry Awards - Social Impact, small cells create advanced LTE testbeds for aspiring engineers worldwide.

2016

* Small Cell Forum Industry Awards – Judges Choice for the Viper platform

2017

* Small Cell Forum Industry Awards – Outstanding Innovation in Small Cell Business Case

2018

* Security Essen 2018 – Special Award in the Security Innovation Awards 2018 for Presence

2019

* Small Cell Forum Industry Awards – Excellence in the delivery of Software and Services (4) – Management, automation and orchestration for Private LTE

References

External links

Official Company Website

Business Weekly ip.access Profile
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ip.Access Companies based in Cambridge Mobile telecommunications