DigitalBridge is adding a stake in a private networks provider to its investment portfolio, leading a $60 million Series C round for Celona through DigitalBridge Ventures. Named for the city of Barcelona, Celona was conceived by veterans of Qualcomm, CommScope’s Ruckus Wireless, Aruba and Federated Wireless during Mobile World Congress several years ago. The company aims to make private cellular as easy for the enterprise as WiFi, by delivering an end-to-end hardware solution coupled with cloud-based network slicing software provided as a service.
“Celona has brought to the private 5G market a category-defining solution that we believe will reshape the future of enterprise networking,” said Marc Ganzi, President and Chief Executive Officer of DigitalBridge, in a press release. “We are thrilled to partner with Celona for DigitalBridge’s inaugural venture investment.”
Celona has racked up customer wins with some high-profile enterprises who are keeping their names and their networks private, and the company has also announced deals with SBAC, Verizon and NTT. With SBAC, Celona has built a private LTE network at a 400-acre, $1 billion smart city development near Purdue University. NTT has plans to deploy Celona’s solution at two smart factories owned by Schneider Electric, and Verizon is planning to integrate Celona’s 5G LAN into the carrier’s OnSite 5G portfolio.
“The company’s products and technology are poised to have a transformative impact on the entire industry,” said Ganzi. “Their growth and leadership in the private cellular space to date has simply been spectacular.”
Celona’s success striking partnerships with carriers could be a key asset, because carriers bring spectrum and network expertise. But so far, some of Celona’s biggest deals haven’t involved carrier spectrum. Purdue University and Schneider Electric are both using Citizens Broadband Radio Access (CBRS). This midband spectrum can be licensed to enterprises or municipalities, as well as to carriers. It can also be used without a license in areas where enterprise use will not interfere with license holders or the U.S. Navy, which has traditionally used the band.
CBRS networks are being deployed without carrier involvement, especially in the U.S. heartland, where interference with Navy ships is not a concern. Illinois, Iowa and Idaho are all home to CBRS networks. John Deere plans to connect factory robots to private 5G in Illinois and Idaho, and St. Luke’s Hospital in Boise uses a Celona CBRS LTE network to connect smartphones used by providers to capture patient data.
The analysts at Berg Insight estimate there are already more than 1,000 private LTE deployments globally, and 200-300 private 5G deployments. The total number is projected to grow tenfold by 2026, with 5G’s share rising fast.
The Celona investment could give DigitalBridge a way to participate in this growth, even when deployments do not involve the company’s traditional carrier customers. It also gives the infrastructure giant a stake in an upstart that is going against some of the biggest names in tech in the private wireless space. AWS and Cisco have both announced turnkey, cloud-based private 5G products, and Microsoft could probably bring a similar solution if it chose to.
In addition, Celona has to compete against network equipment heavyweights Nokia and Ericsson. Nokia says it has 420 private wireless customers for industrial private wireless, and Ericsson is scrambling to close the gap, leveraging its recent acquisitions of Cradlepoint for cellular gateways and Quortus for software and mobile edge compute expertise.
Celona claims it uniquely enables enterprises to operate a 5G network within their existing infrastructure, and will use proceeds from the financing to expand its sales channels worldwide. Digital Bridge is joined in the Series C round by Lightspeed Venture Partners, Norwest Venture Partners, NTTVC, Qualcomm Ventures, and Cervin Ventures, all of whom participated in Celona’s $40 million Series B round in October 2020. Celona has also received funding from In-Q-Tel, a non-profit venture capital firm created more than 20 years ago to identify and deliver cutting edge technologies to the U.S. intelligence community.
By Martha DeGrasse, Inside Towers Contributing Analyst
Veteran telecom industry editor and journalist Martha DeGrasse is an Inside Towers Contributing Analyst. DeGrasse owns Network Builder Reports and contributes regularly to several publications. She was formerly a writer and editor with RCR Wireless and a TV business news producer.
Reader Interactions