Mimosa Networks is offering either an alternative or a complement to private 5G – using unlicensed Wi-Fi spectrum to deliver simple, scalable, and cost-effective FWA broadband for enterprises worldwide.
In sum – what to know:
Simplicity and speed – Mimosa’s point-to-point and point-to-multipoint FWA systems can be deployed in hours, providing fibre-like broadband without complex cores, spectrum licensing, or integration headaches.
Reach and applications – from Mount Everest base camps to urban campuses in Mumbai, the technology serves both remote and dense environments, relieving pressure points and supporting outdoor connectivity.
Unlicensed spectrum – Mimosa offers purpose-built networks in the Wi-Fi bands that offload non-critical traffic from mobile networks, maintain predictable capacity, and avoid the costs and constraints of licensed cellular.
If we step back momentarily from the minutiae of how to scale private 5G for Industry 4.0, and the cut-and-thrust of integrating complex cellular systems into entrenched IT and OT set-ups, then US-based Mimosa Networks would like a word. Away from all the noise about private 5G at Industrial Wireless Forum, and the existential crisis the market faces following Nokia’s move to de-prioritise campus-sized 5G systems, there is another story to tell – about cheap and easy carrier-grade fixed-wireless broadband access (FWA) for enterprise environments.
This is where Mimosa plays, and is what it wants to talk about. Jim Nevelle, president and chief executive at the firm, says: “We’re never going to be as complex as a private network. And, actually, some of those companies are struggling big time right now because of challenges with spectrum regulation and systems integration, and just that private cellular is a heavy lift. And we are serving a different need, anyway – to deliver simple connectivity to operators and enterprises, now, whether as a temporary fix, a back-up solution, or as permanent connectivity.”
The point is Mimosa Networks offers simplicity, flexibility, and scalability – out of the gate, it reckons. Acquired by Indian operator Reliance Jio for around $60 million in 2023, via its US-based Radisys subsidiary, it offers “fibre-like” FWA broadband in the expanded 5 GHz and newer 6 GHz spectrum bands. Its portfolio spans point-to-point backhaul radios and point-to-multipoint (PTMP) access solutions, and is used by wireless ISPs and operators to extend high-speed connectivity to areas where fibre deployment is too slow, expensive, or impractical.
India is a captive market for FWA offload, notes Nevelle. “In India, your normal 4G/5G phone is your hotspot when you go home at night,” he says. The strategy at Reliance Jio, with 500 million mobile subscribers, is to unburden its mobile network with FWA in unlicensed spectrum. Mimosa’s flagship PTMP platform – which twins its A6 Wi-Fi 6E access point with C6x radios – operates in the 5 GHz and 6 GHz bands, using the wide channel bandwidths (in 6 GHz) alongside advanced modulation, MU-MIMO and beamforming to boost capacity and reduce interference.
The name is a portmanteau of MIMO, per its use of multiple antennas at transmitter and receiver level (multiple-input, multiple-output), and spectrum access / analysis (SA), per its channel optimisation software. It claims AP-level capacity up to 6 Gbps, and downlink access approaching gigabit speeds (depending on conditions). The architecture underpins Reliance Jio’s AirFiber programme, being rolled out at scale to offload household cellular traffic in India. “It is deploying us in the millions,” says Nevelle. “We are the largest purpose-built FWA architecture on the planet.”
By covering the 5 GHz and 6 GHz bands, the system gives service providers spectrum flexibility and the ability to serve large subscriber volumes from a single tower – as a scalable alternative to fibre for last-mile broadband. Alongside its access portfolio, its point-to-point radios provide high-reliability links for tower-to-tower backhaul or remote-site connectivity. Recent additions – such as 6 GHz support, automated frequency coordination services, and new non-line-of-sight radios – are designed to improve range, throughput and deployment flexibility.
Fibre alternative
The India story, about the lack of non-urban fibre infrastructure, is repeated everywhere, practically. Nevelle sums up: “There’s a big push on fibre in the US, but the stats say it can only be deployed cost-effectively to 60 percent of homes; 35 percent require some sort of FWA technology, because the fibre cost would be three-to-five times higher, and the rest is rural America, probably better served by LEO satellites. Latin America is in the same boat; there’s just not much fibre outside of the cities. Africa is the same, just more so. Africa, also, is a good spot for us.”
Meanwhile, Europe has been on a “high fibre diet” for years, he says, and offers mostly “pocket opportunities” for FWA providers like Mimosa; Asia is a “mixed bag”, he says, between and the ex-urban fibre spread in countries like South Korea and Japan, and this everywhere-tale about out-of-reach rural communities – or power plants or water stations, or oil and gas refineries, or other industrial plants or factories. He says: “An oil field, say, can either lease rights from a carrier, which they don’t generally want to do, or they can utilize our unlicensed technology.”
Point is for remote outdoor operations, unlicensed spectrum is plentiful, and generally reliable. “Rural Scotland, it’s not very congested – right? Downtown London; yes, okay, you’re going to run into a lot of things.” But the late SA appendage to its original MIMO branding is about its experience with spectrum management, even in chatty locales. Nevelle says: “In our world, you expect some sort of interference. That is how Wi-Fi works; there’s a lot of stuff flying around.” For enterprise comms, predictability and reliability are as important as performance and simplicity, clearly.
They are measures that Wi-Fi tends to be beaten with, as well – often by the cellular-side of the Industry 4.0 vendor market, mob-handed at Industrial Wireless Forum. He goes on: “We’re deployed in heavy urban environments, like Mumbai – right? We are dealing with thousands of these units in very dense urban environments – so we do that very well. We expect to see garbage, if you will, in terms of interference, and our job is to find a path through it. We’re constantly scanning all the different channels, and, if there’s congestion, we switch between. Hence the name.”
But comparisons break down, anyway, because Mimosa is pitching between the lines. “We’re not building a blanket Wi‑Fi network to cover everything,” says Nevelle. “Our focus is on tight, focused beams to specific endpoints. We’re not an alternative to private cellular in heavy-use factories with lots of robots. Instead, we concentrate on point-to-point or point-to-multipoint connectivity to relieve pressure points in urban areas, and to support outdoor access and backhaul in non-urban environments, including enterprise sites with lots of moving parts.”
It is not trying to sell an entire smart-city Wi-Fi infrastructure – in other words. Instead, it is offering a neat point (or multi-point) solution, which is good for a range of enterprise scenarios. “A city can deploy an antenna on a water tower to reach city hall, post office, libraries – without paying for fibre, or CBRS licenses, or negotiating with carriers. It’s a simpler, lower-cost way to build a network you fully control – free spectrum, minimal permitting, and equipment that’s purpose-built for outdoor connectivity rather than blanket coverage.”
Such multi-point opportunities are everywhere, he says – the example, above, about the post office and library is a real reference; the firm has a FWA system at base camp on Mount Everest; it has supplied the same for a weekend pop-up music event for 50,000 people in a city park somewhere in the US; it stands up a WI-Fi system at Fleet Week in Seattle, where navy ships and aircraft carriers moor along the bay (and where “CBRS isn’t going to work because of radar”); it has an access point atop a race car on a test track somewhere in Eastern Europe.
“You put the devices anywhere in the world, fire up the system, and, bam, you have a network. What might take weeks or months, and long negotiation cycles, you can put up a network in 15 minutes,” he says.
Cellular alternative
Sometimes enterprises just need a quicker connectivity fix, and service providers bring Mimosa to the table alongside them. “We were recently asked by a major US carrier to help out – to deliver immediately. And we showed up to a planning meeting, where they were listing off all these requirements – around permitting, licences, integration.
“And our guy just goes out and turns it on; and comes back in, and says, ‘there you go: multiple gigabit Ethernet connectivity’. And they were like, ‘but we haven’t even finished the planning meeting’. And enterprises have an option to build a network in an economical and robust way. What we’re doing today for carriers is no different to what enterprise environments can do on their own. And we’ve proven that time and time again. So when we start hearing about private wireless, and all the complexities enterprises go through – it doesn’t need to be that way.”
Does it make you chuckle or shake your head, when the private networks industry talks all the time about how to simplify, and how to make it cheaper and more intuitive? “You’re not far off; I’m not going to lie. We have a solution that is easy to deploy. Granted, there are nuances in certain environments. But I don’t know how many times I’ve walked into an enterprise, and it asks: what core, what spectrum, how many radios? And it’s like, ‘just stop all of that; none of that matters. We can put this up in hours, and you’ll have connectivity to the whole campus.”
Where private cellular is needed for higher-grade mission-critical applications, then the Mimosa system can exist as a short-term fix, and a longer-term off-load for non-critical applications. “If you want to put mission critical services on top, we can take the other items. You can build a network with us for your point-of-sale machines, traditional IoT devices, some camera traffic – and use private cellular for all the business-critical or public safety stuff. Take everything else off, and free up your other mission-critical systems.”
Times have changed, says Nevelle; Wi-Fi-based FWA systems in unlicensed bands are a crucial component of the broader carrier and enterprise solution. “Five years ago, if I walked into one of the major operators, they probably wouldn’t let me past the lobby – like we were completely not trusted, and were going to bring our filth into the building. We were the uncleansed,” he says, with a laugh. “But the WISP market in the US has exploded, and you have these regional and rural carriers that have built entire networks using unlicensed spectrum.
“They are connecting rural America, and the carriers are paying attention. And where we weren’t allowed into the lobby, we’re now at the table with them, talking about how our technology augments networks. The problem is these 5G FWA solutions have been deployed at scale, and they realise they can only support a certain amount of FWA connections per cell before the network falls down. Because the networks weren’t built for a router in a house to suck down Netflix all day; they were built to be mobile. And so they want purpose-built networks instead – like ours.”
And so unlicensed spectrum comes to the rescue – enabling purpose-built FWA point solutions that are quick and cost-effective to deploy, and optimized for high-volume traffic. By focusing connectivity where it’s needed – building to building, campus to campus, or tower to multiple endpoints – Mimosa’s approach offloads non-critical traffic from licensed networks, keeps capacity predictable, and delivers reliable broadband without the complexity or expense of traditional cellular infrastructure. That’s the story, then.
