Mimosa Networks Delivers 5G Fixed Wireless Solution to Displace Fiber-to-the-Home

Affordable Fiber Alternative Fuels Large-Scale ISP Business Opportunities in Rural, Suburban and Urban Areas

Santa Clara, CA – February 21, 2017 – Mimosa Networks, Inc., the leader in cloud-managed, hybrid fiber-wireless networks, announced today the first commercially-viable 5G fixed wireless internet architectures, the urban MicroPoP and rural GigaPoP, which feature Mimosa’s new proprietary Spectrum Reuse Synchronization (SRS) technology. Mimosa’s breakthrough solution sets new benchmarks in cost and spectrum efficiency, enabling scalable network deployments of fiber-fast, reliable internet in under-connected urban and rural areas.

The high cost of fiber-to-the-home and the continued dominance of fixed connections carrying 94% of all internet traffic has reinvigorated demand for a disruptive alternative in fixed broadband. Leveraging technology advancements in Massive MIMO and antenna beamforming, Mimosa’s Spectrum Reuse Synchronization (SRS) technology adds an even more powerful dimension to scale wireless networks with expanded capacity and bandwidth. Precise time coordination of transmissions, network‑wide, eliminates the interference caused by other nearby radios. This allows a single access point (AP) to efficiently reuse channels rather than wasting spectrum to avoid interference.

With scarce mobile spectrum and price per gigabyte of mobile traffic now exceeding 50-100 times that of broadband, Mimosa’s new 5G gigabit fixed wireless architectures will be critical to meet the growing connectivity demand. The solutions are available now and future-ready for the advent of 5G connectivity.

“Our approach introduces wireless where fiber ends, and scales to connect dense urban and hard to reach rural homes at a fraction of the cost of fiber-to-the-home,” said Brian Hinman, CEO of Mimosa Networks. “With this announcement, we are now at the point where we are able to fulfill Mimosa’s founding vision. We are excited to see the rapid growth of new business opportunities as we usher in the 5G fixed wireless era.”

Residential environments pose challenging and often unpredictable physical obstacles that impede wireless signals. While some 5G industry players favor millimeter wave solutions for the larger swaths of spectrum, these higher frequencies suffer massive performance degradation when they hit trees and moving vehicles in the last 500-feet to a home.

For this reason, Mimosa favors deploying solutions in lower, sub-6 GHz spectrum. But with less spectrum available, efficient spectrum reuse techniques are critical to achieve scale. While Mimosa’s SRS technology is spectrum-agnostic, when deployed in these lower frequencies, Mimosa’s solutions expand residential fixed wireless opportunities where millimeter wave solutions struggle in near- and non-line-of-sight areas.

“With a severe shortage of lower frequency spectrum, Mimosa’s real innovation is in developing new technologies to reuse that critical spectrum geographically to reduce the amount of spectrum required to scale a gigabit speed network,” said Jaime Fink, Chief Product Officer of Mimosa Networks. “The wireless last mile is not a ‘one-size-fits-all’ scenario. We must take advantage of fiber where it’s available, use millimeter wave frequencies for reliable short-range backhaul, and most importantly, promote spectrum sharing and reuse techniques in the lower frequencies that are needed to reach people’s homes.”

The Mimosa 5G MicroPoP and GigaPoP solutions represent the first commercially-viable 5G solution for residential areas. “The opportunity for ISPs to reliably deliver hundreds of Megabits per second to each home at one-tenth the cost of fiber changes the game,” said Rory Conaway, CEO Triad Wireless, an upstart Wireless ISP operating in dense residential areas in Arizona. “As a 100% wireless ISP using the Mimosa 5G MicroPoP solution with SRS technology, we’ve dramatically reduced our spectrum usage and delivered fiber-like speeds to customers who could not be happier with the experience. Using spectrum with some non-line-of-sight capability is critical in the last-mile, and my network would not scale without synchronization. Mimosa will open up many higher density market areas to expand my business.”