LONDON — (BUSINESS WIRE) — February 22, 2017 — ip.access has today announced its strategic vision for the development of a new generation of multi-purpose small cells integrating IoT functionality with LTE access, as part of its Viper2020™ platform. Building on the market success of its award-winning Viper™ product platform, using the Intel Transcede™ T3K solutions for LTE access, the company is integrating NB-IoT (Narrow Band IoT) and Cat-M1 (Category M1) capability into the product family within its overall vision. The building blocks of the Viper™ platform, in terms of virtualization, PaaS, resource sharing and network slicing are key elements of the 5G future.

Many in the industry dismiss the need for small cells in IoT, given the improved link budget for NB-IoT and the consequent ability for macro cells to reach further indoors. ip.access maintains that radio coverage is always statistical, and a small cell layer for IoT is essential to provide the quality and continuity of coverage that all IoT applications rely on to make money.

As ip.access’ CTO, Nick Johnson, commented, “While the coverage of macro networks may be improved for NB-IoT, it will never be perfect. And with the wider bandwidth required by Cat-M1 devices, the coverage improvement will be even less. The industry will rely on a mix of Cat-M1 for wearables, medical and assisted living applications, and NB-IoT for low data rate sensors of many types. Furthermore, the IoT devices may not be as mobile as today’s smartphones, and so will be even more vulnerable to network fades and not-spots. Small cell connectivity is one of the essential foundational components for the IoT industry as it scales.”

“ip.access has a long track record of small cell innovation and we’re pleased to be working together on their next generation of IoT products and services. By taking advantage of NFV and SDN advances they are continuing to augment their portfolio of Intel based 3G and LTE products. This is another important step on the path to 5G where Intel will offer the best end-to-end solutions for the client, network and cloud.” said Caroline Chan, Vice President and General Manager, Intel 5G Infrastructure Division.

ip.access Viper2020™ vision includes Access, Presence and IoT capability for the ultimate in network performance, coverage and analytics. By connecting so many sources of data, ip.access brings a new dimension of monetisation to the Mobile Network Operator’s mission. You can find out more about ip.access’ Viper2020™ here.

ip.access will be exhibiting Mobile World Congress 2017 in Hall 7, Stand C60. To arrange a meeting at the show email events@ipaccess.com.

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Notes to editors

About ip.access

Headquartered in the United Kingdom, ip.access originates the best-in-class wireless solutions that maximise the value of radio and data assets via disruptive business models. The company has products and solutions live in over 100 customers’ networks around the world.

With its award-winning Viper™ multi-operator solution, ip.access is helping mobile operators, landlords, MVNOs, enterprises, service providers and integrators to open up a host of new commercial opportunities for the provision of indoor cellular coverage. Viper combines several ip.access products and technologies into an enterprise-focused platform which dramatically simplifies and reduces the cost of small cell deployments.

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