Enterprise cellular network innovator gathers all of the elements needed to support enterprise organizations, including its unique architecture, channels, and ecosystem partners
CUPERTINO, Calif., Feb. 11, 2020 — Celona, the first wireless networking company to bridge the gap between 5G/LTE cellular technologies and enterprise IT infrastructure, today announced results from multiple real-world deployments from its formal beta program. This program includes eight new organizations deploying Celona’s cellular wireless network solution to deliver a dedicated “express lane” for mission-critical business applications including crowded outdoor venues, Industrial IoT applications, campus-wide connectivity, video applications and more.
In addition to its exclusive beta program, Celona continues its momentum in the burgeoning Citizen Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) market by building new partnerships with innovators like enterprise edge networking leader Cradlepoint and working with global channel partners including World Wide Technology.
“The FCC’s recent decision to allow full-scale commercial deployments in the CBRS band is very timely given the outstanding response Celona has seen to its own end-to-end offering,” said Dr. Mehmet Yavuz, CTO and co-founder at Celona. “Enterprise IT teams across industries want CBRS spectrum to enable a new express lane of communication for business-owned and staff-operated mobile and IoT infrastructure. Low latency and high-reliability operation for relevant applications with the use of private LTE is a key requirement, in addition to simplified deployment and operations.”
New beta sites help demonstrate simplicity of Celona’s solution architecture
Celona’s eight new beta site customers span logistics environments, industrial shipping yards, global retail locations and other challenging wireless environments, including the NC State University Institute for Educational Innovation located in Raleigh, North Carolina.
“The coverage and reliability metrics promised by CBRS-based private LTE technology are ideal for several indoor and outdoor use cases in our environment,” said Ray Zeisz, director of Enterprise Infrastructure Programs at the NC State University Institute for Educational Innovation. “We are looking forward to exploring it further as part of Celona’s engineering beta program. So far, our tests have focused on zero-touch installation of the product components where the initial setup was performed within an hour – including the ability to provision smartphones with our private SIM cards. Next, we will be testing performance and reliability of the private LTE wireless connections in challenging indoor and outdoor locations where public LTE and Wi-Fi coverage may not be ideal – and rolling out new cabling is simply not possible.”
Each of the beta sites is deploying Celona’s end-to-end solution, providing everything they need to implement an enterprise cellular network in a matter of hours. Enterprise IT teams interested in being a candidate for participation in Celona’s beta program can do so here: https://celona.io/beta.
In order to demonstrate the power of interference-free and clean spectrum offered by CBRS, Celona’s solution was recently deployed at a music festival held in Las Vegas on December 5, 2019. Applications requiring uninterrupted connectivity at such an event could include Point of Sale (PoS) systems for food, drink and merchandise, RFID scanning, video security and more. Leveraging staff-operated iPhones for performance testing, there were several locations where <1Mbps of data rates were recorded for the public LTE network performance due to increasing number of music fans in attendance at the event. Celona’s enterprise cellular network in the CBRS spectrum was able to deliver download speeds of >25Mbps for the same set of devices, with latency metrics also improving 200x. A video demonstrating these performance results can be viewed at https://celona.io/dec19festival.
Partnerships highlight opportunity for joint innovation
In addition to its beta program, Celona continues to work with key ecosystem and channel partners in order to ensure that its networking platform easily integrates with other solutions within the industry. A great example is Celona’s work with Cradlepoint, a cloud-based edge networking leader.
“Enterprise environments such as distribution centers, factories, and transportation hubs demand reliable wireless connectivity for a variety of applications – from video surveillance to in-vehicle connectivity to IoT infrastructure,” said Ken Hosac, VP of IoT Strategy & Business Development at Cradlepoint. “We are looking forward to integrating with Celona’s unique application-aware cellular wireless to meet the new generation of connectivity challenges in the enterprise.”World Wide Technology (WWT), a technology solution provider with more than US$11 billion in annual revenue that provides digital strategy, innovative technology and supply chain solutions to large public and private organizations, is also evaluating Celona’s technology for a variety of use cases.“Today’s mission-critical environments in the enterprise require reliable wireless connectivity on a clean spectrum with a promise of guaranteed SLA,” said Neil Anderson, senior director, Network Solutions for WWT’s Global Engineering Team. “We are looking forward to exploring Celona’s technology as we help our customers bring digital transformation projects to life across verticals such as industrial, manufacturing, energy, and utilities.”
Seeing it all in action
Celona’s engineering team will be hosting its first technical training session at the WLAN Professionals Conference in Phoenix on Feb 19th and 20th. During the 5-hour deep dive, attendees will also get a chance to perform hands on testing of the Celona solution.
About Celona
Celona accelerates the adoption for business-critical apps in the enterprise by taking advantage of the Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) spectrum. Celona’s solution architecture is designed to automate deployment of cellular wireless by enterprise IT organizations and managed service providers, and drastically simplify its integration with an existing enterprise IT infrastructure. As the provider of the first networking platform for enterprise cellular, Celona’s mission is to take enterprise wireless to where it has not yet been. For more information, please visit celona.io. Follow Celona on Twitter @celonaio.
