Tuesday, June 14, 2022
Qualcomm beefed up its 5G infrastructure portfolio and RAN capabilities by agreeing to buy Israel-headquartered mobile network automation and orchestration vendor Cellwize for an undisclosed sum.
Rumours about a move by Qualcomm for Cellwize emerged last month, with the US chip company today (13 June) revealing the companies agreed a deal.
AvidThink founder and analyst Roy Chua told Mobile World Live the deal made clear that Qualcomm was serious about open RAN and private 5G. “It brings in-house key software assets in the form of the non real time RIC and service management and orchestration (SMO), as well as AI and machine learning capabilities to help accelerate 5G RAN deployments including bridging from non-open RAN deployments.”
Chua said the deal would drive further innovation in Qualcomm’s private network RAN automation cloud-based platform and small-cell offerings. The move “also increases Qualcomm’s strength in software assets and provides a route for” the company “to play a bigger role in the RAN with existing carriers already using Cellwize like Telefonica, Verizon“, and Globe Telecom.
Qualcomm Ventures was one of the lead investors of a $32 million Series-B funding round conducted by Cellwize in 2020.
Cellwize had raised a total of $56.5 million across four rounds prior to the Qualcomm deal.
The Israeli company also lists Nextel and Bell Canada among its customers.
Qualcomm did not state when the deal was expected to close.
What it means
Durga Malladi, SVP and GM for modems and infrastructure at Qualcomm Technologies, last week told journalists Cellwize’s deployment, automation and overall management capabilities strengthened the US company’s development work on 5G radio and distributed units.
For public networks, operators need a layer which sits above the various vendors to orchestrate the disaggregated elements, while in dedicated private infrastructure, system integrators require orchestration tools to deploy, manage and run the systems.
“As a part of that you need the RAN automation and the orchestration platform,” Malladi stated.
As operators transition from brownfield networks to open-RAN, Qualcomm is betting orchestration is one of the key pain points it can solve with the addition of Cellwize.
Malladi noted multi-vendor greenfield networks also needed fine-tuning with orchestration across the various vendors.
Competition front
Malladi said it was too early to say what impact Qualcomm’s acquisition would have on a Cellwize partnership with VMware, but noted his company had good relations with Intel, another collaborator of the Israeli business.
He also noted Cellwize filled in some gaps for VMware and there was not 100 per cent overlap between the two companies.
The addition of Cellwize could also lead to Qualcomm competing against some of its customers who are the process of developing their own open-RAN orchestration solutions.
Malladi stated Qualcomm will still partner with those customers where needed and Cellwize’s capabilities were complimentary as they address the needs of both mobile operators and system integrators.
By: DocMemory
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