Mobile broadband network developer Stoke has received $15 million in Series D funding from Reliance Technology Ventures Limited, Sequoia Capital, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, and Japanese networking company Net One Systems, bringing the telecom network startup’s total funding to $65 million. Stoke raised $20 million in Series C funding in 2007 (led by DAG Ventures), $19.8 million in Series B funding in 2005, and $10 million in Series A funding.
As people are using their mobile phones to download applications, view movies, and listen to music, mobile data carriers need to provide greater bandwidth to support mobile phone usage. Stoke’s hardware provides mobile carriers the technology to let phones access different wireless networks including 3G, GSM, CDMA, Wi-Fi and WiMax and converges wireless coverage to help carriers cope with massive increments in web traffic.
For example, Stoke’s technology lets phones seamlessly detect different networks and will automatically enable phones to switch to available networks based on location and availability. Stoke says the new funds will be used to support continuing partnerships with with mobile carriers.
Leena said…
…mobile data carriers need to provide greater bandwidth to support mobile phone usage.
The problem of bandwidth limitation in telecommunications always come back to the hardware and although I don’t know what kind of technology that Stoke’s developed (I am sure it is cutting-edge), the solution to this bandwidth limitation is going to be solved by Photonics technology. This chip has no electrical circuit or any silicon components at all . All the components are pure photonics & light wave-guides. There are lots of research and development in this area.
I have seen a prototype of a photonic chip (move the cursor over the diagram) which was about 7mm by 7mm size in a presentation at a symposium here at University of Auckland , New Zealand,. The presenter from Australia (see link above) described that this new next generation chip will make telecommunication much faster and tremendously increase the signal bandwidth carrying capacity of telecommunication systems.
CUDOS from Australia is collaborating with the University of Auckland Photonic Center, Intel (& some other partners) in developing these next generation photonic chip. They approximate that it will become available commercially in the next 4 years or so.
When this next generation chip becomes available, then Adios the silicon-based chip.
the problen (they are solving) is theoretical/futuristic. now’a'days decent carriers have more bandwidth than they will in the next few years.
Hi,
How is this different to Vanu or Cambridge Software Radio, along with a few others that have been in this field for decades?
Kind regards,
MN
Hi,
How is this different to Vanu or Cambridge Software Radio, along with a few others that have been in this field for decades?
Kind regards,
Shakir Razak
@ Falafulu Fisi
The CUDOS project is very interesting (= good for generating PhD’s), but it is more than a decade away from practical implementation (=good for generating revenue).
First, the type of optical packet switching they are describing has not taken off because the CMOS IC switching technology has more than scaled to meet the problem. State of the art CMOS ICs are now being designed for >400Gbit/s routing/switching by companies like Cisco & Juniper (routing configurations scale to 25Tbit/s theoretically). As an individual who studied III-V semiconductors and is very much pro-optics, I can’t get behind this kind of work.
Second, lots of issues with their approach:
Delay Lines: They are using non-linearity at the band edge. As modern network architectures are moving to tunability/reconfigurability, the band edge now needs to be tuned per channel. This is tuned via voltage bias (slow process) difficult at line rate, so this would mean that this would be a major stumbling block for packet switching.
Dispersion: HAH! solving for chromatic dispersion is an old/solved problem. The key issue is polarization mode dispersion — this is a big issue for 100Gbit/s transmission even for client reaches — see IEEE 802.3ba for various presentations on PMD
I’d love to see photonic ICs. I am just always cognizant of the $1B which BKHM spent on ASOC and failed. Many of my colleagues preach photonic integration using the success of Si CMOS as a “parallel” story. I hope it can be true someday, but looking at discrete element yields, material processes, and industry volumes this “someday” is further away than your post suggests.
Finally, I’d like to see more photonics funding going to some good research topics with better applications spaces, good example =
http://arxiv.org/abs/0904.2081
Really futuristic , but many applications to scaling to complex signaling for optical communication
Is this old news made new? Did they not secure Series D last Summer? If so, did they reopen the round (down round)? Does anyone know?
twitter/mobileinsider
“carrier class mobile broadband gateways.” i like the sound of that.
thats a lot of money this late in the game.
multi-network access may be the next big thing for mobile carriers. users will probably never get a discount for the efficiency of the service.
Network, Multi, Mobile, Gateway………… i’m surprised we are not in the same business.
MyLocator.mobi – location is king
Once we get the full Adobe Flash working on mobile devices, I believe the tipping point will be reached. Let us hope that we have enough broadband for the mobile revolution coming up ahead.
Constantine from dotMusic/Music.us
Matt, that’s interesting point of view. I think that the industry will get there sooner than we might think. It has already been available in the commercial space for the parts that make optical communication systems operate more efficient these days. Laser amplifiers (erbium-doped fibre-laser) are already available, soliton-fibre (low or almost zero dispersion) , optical multiplexers & demuxes are there too so I think that the components to finally make these optical communication system scale are just around the corner , including the photonic chip.
One interesting area of research today is the development of noiseless optical transmitter developed using quantum squeezed states. Since all transmitters either photonic or otherwise emits intrinsic noise (which is unavoidable) as additive on top of the carrier signal, this leads to the limitation of the bandwidth as you know that the noise level grows as the signal propagates along the medium. The Quantum-Optics group at University of Auckland (New Zealand) , which they are part of the Photonic Center has been theoretical work & development in this area of noiseless (squeeze-states) transmitter . The idea is when the signal pulse is generated, the instrinsic noise is squeezed out from the carrier signal itself therefore making it noise-free (or almost). Moore’s law is almost reaching its limit, since the law of quantum mechanics dominates at the micro-level where nothing can be further miniaturized anymore such as packing more components into the chip (silicon-based ones) , so I think that photonics will prolong the Moore’s law for decades to come.
By the way, I used to be an opto-electronic design engineer in my previous career before I became a programmer just prior to the dot-com bubble, however I still pop in to my old department (ie, Unversity of Auckland Physics Department) whenever I am around to have a chat with the researchers there about the latest hot topic.
I meant to say:
…the Photonic Center has been doing theoretical work & development …
rather than:
…the Photonic Center has been theoretical work & development …
a) How true is this D round funding. I could not see a press release at stoke.com
b) $65M till date with zero deployments and zero customers. Just partnerships being announced for quite some while now.
c) same seems to be the case with WiChorus. Where are these guys heading to with some much of fund already in the basket.
d) will they be able to give a nice round of competition to guys like Starent, and generate 500% returns for their Investors?