Cellwize Secures $24.5 M Funding led by Carmel Ventures

Cellwize, a Self-Organizing Network (SON) solutions provider, has raised $14.5 million in a Series A funding round led by Carmel Ventures and Vintage Investment Partners.

In addition, Viola Credit (formerly Plenus) granted a $10 million credit facility to Cellwize. The funding will be used to boost Cellwize’s innovative SON customer-centric optimization capabilities and to expand its market presence including a planned significant increase in its workforce.

Already in operation for over two years, Cellwize optimization solutions are implemented in some of the world's leading mobile operators serving over 300 million subscribers. Cellwize’s solutions reduce operating expenses, drive measurable improvements in customer experience and maximize overall profitability. Cellwize’s elastic-SON® solution autonomously delivers peak network performance, network reliability and operational efficiencies for increasingly complex heterogeneous networks. Cellwize’s Value-Driven SON® uses Big Data to enable networks to self-adapt and prioritize their services based on subscriber behavior profiles and network demand.

The demand for SON solutions has increased due to operators’ need to maximize value and to simplify managing, optimizing and healing mobile radio access networks that have grown increasingly complex. The worldwide mobile network optimization (MNO) and SON market is expected to hit $5.6 billion by 2018, according to recent Infonetics market research.

"Cellwize brings an innovative solution to mobile operators that need to provide a superior end-user experience, while adapting their networks to emerging services like OTT, IoT and HD Video.” said Ori Bendori, General Partner at Carmel Ventures and a Cellwize board member. “Cellwize's innovative cloud-based technology that is compatible with various RAN vendors and mobile technologies is already adopted by Tier 1 Operators. We are pleased to join them and look forward to their expansion in this evolving market space.”

“Cellwize has continuously invested in technology innovation and solution leadership, we will now be able to further accelerate our product road map and our market reach to take advantage of new SON opportunities,” said Ofir Zemer, CEO of Cellwize. “Our recent growth demonstrates even more, that enabling mobile operators to ensure a high quality of service for subscribers while maximizing profitability is essential in today’s highly competitive market space.”