It seems, all we hear about these days is 5G networks. We know that 5G is the future, and can solve a number of problems that networks are having now with 4G LTE. Verizon has already noted that they will be rolling out their 5G network this year, and have a 5G network available at their headquarters in New Jersey up and running by the end of January. The question remains, what vendor will they use for the hardware? And it appears that Kumu Networks is one of those vendors.
Kumu Networks is a company that was founded in 2012 and uses self-interference cancellation or SIC technology. This technology is able to isolate the receiver from the transmitter. This in turn, eliminates noise and frees the receiver to receive external signals. While some carriers are looking to use SIC technology to help with small cells for backhaul on their networks, others are looking at it for 5G networks. In fact the company has already done a field trial with Deutsche Telekom as well as SK Telekom in 2015.
Recently, Kumu raised $25 million in funding. The funders included Cisco, Swisscom, Deutsche Telekom, NEA, Khosla Ventures, Third Point Ventures and Verizon Wireless. Since October of 2013, Kumu Networks has raised a total of $45.4 million in funding. It’s worth noting that currently, Kumu Networks has no products available for purchase, therefore there is no revenue coming into the company. They are looking to use the money raised in these rounds of funding to continue developing their technology.
Verizon is a pretty note worthy name here, at least for those of us in the United States. As it is the only US carrier that helped fund Kumu Networks. Deutsche Telekom (the majority owner of T-Mobile US) is also pretty noteworthy. Verizon has already stated that they are working with their existing partners including Ericsson, Cisco, Nokia, Alcatel-Lucent, Samsung and Qualcomm on 5G. Both with their network as well as devices that will be able to work on the 5G network. 5G, unfortunately, is still a few years away – at least – from main adoption. But it appears that the ground work is definitely underway.