The buzz around femtocells – desktop boxes that boost indoor mobile phone coverage and route calls over a broadband connection – has helped RadioFrame Networks raise an additional $28m in debt and equity backing, bringing its total funding to over $100m.
RadioFrame, which was founded in 1999 mostly by McCaw engineers and executives who left the mobile network operator after it was acquired by AT&T, has spent the last few years designing a femtocell around its own silicon. As a result it expects to be able to sell its petite Omnicell@home device for less than $100 – much cheaper than most rival products.
RadioFrame’s current device supports both 2G and 3G services based on the GSM and WCDMA standards. The company also plans a 4G version that will support both LTE (Long Term Evolution) and WiMax.
Femtocells and their larger cousins dubbed Picocells are effectively mini base-stations designed to extend cellular coverage into homes and businesses where outdoor signals are often weak or non existent. Most analysts are predicting big things for these small devices, provided network operators embrace the technology. In the US Sprint Nextel has been testing femtocells and most operators in Europe have trials underway.
In the latest funding round Hedge fund Plainfield Asset Management joined existing investors who include Craig McCaw, the mobile phone network pioneer. Other investors include Samsung and Ericsson, two of the largest telecoms infrastructure vendors, O2 and Sprint Nextel, both network operators, and two more VCs, Ignition Partners and VantagePoint Venture Partners.
