ip.access and WNC announce manufacturing partnership

LONDON, UK & TAIPEI, TAIWAN: Leading independent small cell innovator and system builder, ip.access, and Wistron NeWeb Corp (WNC) have announced a major new agreement to jointly deliver the next generation of compact residential and SoHo/SME small cells in high volume to major operator customers around the world.

The agreement particularly covers the next generation of compact, high performance small cells that ip.access announced in November. The company added that the deal with WNC will provide flexible, high volume manufacturing with unrivalled product customisation ability.

Announcing the agreement, CEO Simon Brown said: "We have an increasing number of small cell deployments where operators require rapid and flexible volume delivery with the option to customise products with add-ons such as Wi-Fi, DSL, cable modem and router functions.

"We selected WNC as our partner on the basis of their world class experience in building high performance, compact radio systems, coupled with their proven track record in high-quality, volume product manufacturing. They perfectly match our requirements to build the best price-performance, market-leading products that meet the needs of our rapidly growing, global service provider customer base."

WNC's president, Jeffrey Gau, commented, "WNC had identified the small cell market as a high-growth world market and this agreement is an opportunity to work with a market-leading company to expand both our businesses and jointly accelerate small cell deployments in the growing customer base that ip.access is winning around the world."

As a result of this agreement, ip.access can now offer its customers a wider range of product configuration, via a ‘build-to-order' service, and therefore fully meet individual operator requirements for small cells in different form factors, configurations and high volume delivery schedules.

The first products from the partnership are already in manufacturing and will ship later this quarter.