October 29, 2007
Critical Links Raises $5.7M - Edge Hardware
Critical Links said Friday it raised a $5.7M Series A round from InovCapital, Change Partners and ASK/ISQ Capital. The Portugal-based company develops networking equipment for a range of small to medium sized businesses. The boxes offer support for routing, connectivity, Wifi support, VOIP and telephony management, automatic backup, and storage. It spun off from a software engineering services company called Critical Software in early 2006. The parent company, which has offices in Portugal and in key markets abroad, has been supporting its early stage development.
The question as always with this kind of hardware is: can it be installed and configured and maintained at a cost that is in proportion to the price paid for the gear. We are hoping to update this post with answers to this question and several others we posed to the founders by email.
View Critical Links
Posted at 06:41 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
July 23, 2007
Blavatnik to Buy Web Sports' Premium TV for £25M
US-based billionaire industrialist Len Blavatnik has announced that he is buying Premium TV for £25M ($50M). The company manages video-based websites for several sports groups such as Chelsea Football Club and the Premier League. Premium TV was once a subsidiary of NTL (now Virgin Media). However, in 2002 NTL filed for bankruptcy and Premium TV was bought by Quest Turnaround Advisors.
Read - Reuters story
View - site
Posted at 08:27 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
June 19, 2007
Accedo Raises VC For White Label ITV Content Business
Stockholm-based Accedo Broadband AB, which aggregates and sells content, like an acquarium for your TV and interactive games, to IPTV service providers, as well as the software to manage and provision it all, has raised about €1M from Industrifonden and its early backers.
The startup was founded in 2004 by entrepreneurs Michael Lantz and Fredrik Andersson. It has offices in Stockholm, Sweden and London.
View <"a href=http://www.accedobroadband.com/">Accedo Broadband
Posted at 06:40 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
March 22, 2007
UK's Azea Networks Raises More Funding For Under-sea Networking Equipment
Essex-based Azea Networks has secured $6M of a $15M Series D round, according to a regulatory filing, as reported by PEWire. TVM Capital and Lago Venture Fund were joined by return backers Accel Partners, Atlas Venture and Quester Management.
Azea sells optical networking solutions to undersea cable operators who are interested in increasing their capacity.
Azea's equipment
View - site
Posted at 05:26 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
October 06, 2006
Stockholm founded Voddler Raises $2.2M For Virtual Cable TV
Voddler has raised around $2.2M in VC funding from Sweden's Freja Ventures and Lotsa out of Luxembourg, says PE Wire. The company plans a first roll-out in the US and Europe in 2007 of a virtual cable TV system. What's that?
VoddlerNet will allow viewers to watch TV programs, movies, and all varieties of video content from any Internet-connected device. VoddlerNet technology works on standard, 3rd generation, consumer electronic devices with Internet connection and memory disk or chip. Unlike Slingbox, no PC is required. Vodler promises full TV grade Quality of Service at 5% of current head end and distribution costs for on demand. To serve this, Voddler lays claim to "the world's largest, secure disk array."
The company was founded in April 2005 and now makes Palo Alto, CA is HQ. CEO Martin Alsen was COO & Co-founder at Mirror Image Internet AB, which he took public.
View - Linked-In for Martin Alsen
Posted at 05:34 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
September 25, 2006
VCs Load Up On Swedish Networking Software
VCs can't seem to get enough of Swedish software companies churning out broadband network management code. Three deals have been announced in the last week, the latest being bandwidth management specialist Operax, which raised $15 million in its third round of funding, according to LightReading.
The other two are Telepo, developer of a mobility-enabling software platform targeted at businesses, and NetAdmin, which offers Internet Service Providers and network operators software to manage the devices and components in their networks regardless of the hardware manufacturer.
Operax software is hot because it offers a standards-based way to prioritze gaming and video traffic within an IP network, say the trade pub's editors.
The six year old company is headed up by Anders Lindén (CEO) and Olov Schelén (CFO and co-founder)
Read - Operax Scores $15M (LightReading)
Read - Telepo Funding By Accel (alarm:clock euro)
Read - NetAdmin Net Management Neutraliy Backed By Eqvitec (alarm:clock euro)
Posted at 08:29 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
September 12, 2006
VC-Backed OneAccess Buys Telindus Division
Paris-based OneAccess, a manufacturer of routers and IP equipment, has acquired Telindus Access Products (TAP) division of Telindus Group in Belgium. The deal is meant to consolidate the French company's position in the broadband for business market and make it better equipped to compete with American and Chinese vendors, the firm's CEO said in a statement.
The Telindus broadband product division acquired by OneAccess consists of 113 employees that generate about €18.5M a year in sales. It includes R&D, manufacturing, logistics and sales staff used to selling niche-market access products. All current Telindus employees will continue their activities with the same conditions in the Telindus' premises in Haasrode, Belgium.
Founded in 2001, OneAccess is backed by Innovacom, T-com Venture (corporate VC unit of Deutsche Telekom), CDC Entreprises Innovation, Tempo Capital Partners, AGF Private Equity, and CIC Finance.
As a resutl of the acquisition, OneAccess will employ 230 and Telindus, the ICT Solutions and Services arm of Belgacom will be a strategic partner for the distribution and support.
Read - OneAccess Acquires Telindus Access Products Division (prnewswire)
Posted at 12:46 PM | TrackBack | Permalink
July 31, 2006
Top Telco Startups - Two From Europe
Two European startups made a new list from the telecommunications industry trade publication Light Reading, namely its Top Ten New Startups to watch list. They are Gigle Semiconductor in Spain, which was founded by former ST Microelectronics execs, and T-VIPS, the Norwegian video-over-IP hardware manufacturer with the super-geeky name.
Gigle was founded to design and sell some home networking chips and was recently funded by Accel’s European Fund and Pond Ventures. The LightReading editors must be basing their positive judgement on the management team's experience (maybe also the fact that it raised capital from big name VCs) because there are no clues in the profile about what is innovative, visionary, or disruptive about Gigle’s chips and the home networking market is not exactly sizzling at the moment.
Northzone Ventures-backed T-VIPS made the list too. It is a hardware manufacturer specialized in VOIP and video- over IP gear used by telcos and broadcasters – a tough target market -- but LightReading’s editors list some of its paying customers that are buying in because of the need to deliver video and television over the Internet.
Read - Top Ten New Startups (Light Reading)
Read - Accel's Euro Fund Backs Gigle (a:c euro)
Posted at 08:23 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
May 09, 2006
Know The Skype and P2P Share Of Network Traffic
QoSMOS, a French manufacturer of auditing and optimisation tools for IP networks, raised €3.2M from Sofinnova Partners in an internal second round. Founded in 2000, it raised €2M in its first round.
The startup's software, targeted at Telcos, can answer questions like
What is the quality experienced by users of your 3G services?
What is the impact of Peer to Peer on your network?
What is the Skype share of VoIP minutes on your network?
What range of applications is used by your corporate customers ?
QoSMOS is going to use the capital for European market development and product development, namely its flagship product QoSMOS ForMyNet, designed for broadband solutions. It's also doing R&D in advanced protocol recognition.
There is at least one other company that has a similar ability to answer such questions, Sandvine, but the technology is inside a much larger system, we believe. The fact that Qosmos has several OEMs incorporating its software suggests that it has found market demand.
Read - Qosmos announces (press release)
Posted at 09:24 AM | TrackBack | Permalink
April 05, 2006
Big Deals Fast Track PacketFront's Sales
Sweden's Packetfront has been on our radar since it raised its last round of finance, back in June 2004, so we take note when we see it ramping up sales. It is benefitting from the triple play broadband rollouts underway in Northern Europe and has just sold a $5M initial contract to a Swedish provider, on top of selling €23M worth of gear to a Danish broadband provider, enabling the firm to exceed last year's total annual sales figure in its first quarter 2006.
The unassuming PacketFront broadband box for the home
Packetfront, founded in 1999, expects to generate sales of €43M this year. Its currently hiring for a US expansion.
The fiber broadband firm lays claim to a competitively priced product line that covers gear for the home, as well as software and hardware for the network provider.
It's investors include Amadeus Capital and TLCom, both UK funds.
A Packetfront router supports TV over xDSL, while being able to aggregate networks running WiFi, WiMax, Ethernet over Coax, and Broadband over power lines, for operators that running mixed broadband rollouts.
GigaOm has a good post on the revival of interest in fiber broadband players this week with a US perspective.
Read -SWEDEN.SE - Capital sows the seeds of rapid growth
Read- Good Times Almost Back (gigaom)
