Quantenna Communications, which specializes in Wi-Fi chipsets including 802.11ac, announced recently that it has two new investors.
Vivint Wireless has completed a strategic investment in the company, as has NTT Finance, which is part of NTT Group. Other investors in the company include Swisscom and Telefonica.
Vivint in based in Utah and provides wireless broadband access via Wi-Fi; the company uses Quantenna 4×4 chipsets for Wi-Fi.
Dr. Sam Heidari, CEO of Quantenna, said that the service Vivint provides with Quantenna chipsets “is a large, unique and exciting new application for our high performance Wi-Fi solutions.”
“Vivint and Quantenna have been working closely together for several years to deliver broadband access over 4×4 Wi-Fi,” said Luke Langford, COO of Vivint Wireless. “This strategic investment enables us to have an even closer partnership with Quantenna to deliver new innovative products and services to our growing customer base, leveraging Quantenna’s QHS710 and QSR1000 4×4 802.11ac MU-MIMO solutions.”
Meanwhile, the company welcomed investment from NTT Finance that “brings further resources and expertise to the company and helps to accelerate its deployments in new markets.”
Heidari said that the NTT investments will help the company’s geographical expansion into Japan and Asia, where its products could be used for indoor and outdoor applications. Mori Oshima, CFA and senior manager at NTT Finance, called Wi-Fi a “critical strategic technology for NTT” and said that the company is looking forward to a fruitful partnership with Quantenna to enable new applications and services.
AT&T uses Quantenna’s video-over-Wi-Fi chipsets in its U-Verse deployments, and Quantenna recently announced a collaboration with Texas Instruments on pico cell chipsets with both advanced Wi-Fi and 3G/4G capabilties.
