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Russia's Enforta is Experiencing Exploding Growth in WiMAX Services |
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Written by Administrator
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Feb 04, 2008 at 12:18 AM |
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Yesterday I got an advance press
release detailing Enforta's growth plans for 2008 from my friend Lee
Sparkman who is the President of the Russian WiMAX carrier.
I have known Lee for some time now and he is a solid businessman as
is clearly evidenced by how successful his company is proving to be.
Some of you may have heard my interview in 2006 with Lee on WiMax Global News which is carried here on WiMax.com. You can click on the link for the history to find it.
In
any event, Lee's company Enforta has plans to enter an additional 40
cities in the coming year. This will bring Enforta to a total of 65
markets served. This has all come about due to an additional $40
million investment round led by the existing investors Baring Vostok
Capital Partners, Sumitomo Corporation, and the European Bank for
Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) as well as a new investment
partner Bessemer Venture Partners which chose Enforta for its first
Russian investment. Bessemer is the oldest venture capital practice in
the US.
This growth, which will start with eight cities:
Nizhny Novogorod, Volgograd, Lipetsk, Tomsk, Komsomolsk-na-Amur,
Nakhodka, and Ussuriysk could potentially exceed the number of markets
that Clearwire currently has depending upon their growth this year
(Clearwire is currently deployed in 50 markets).
Lee told me
that everyone felt this was perhaps the most exciting development in
Enforta's four year history and that they were very gratified by their
investors confidence in their business plan. When he and his partner
Victor Ratnikov launched the company in 2003 they planned to have 30
markets by the end of 2007. It turns out they will be about a quarter
short of that goal, but will actually have 33 markets when they reach
it in the 1st quarter of 2008. Not many startups in this business come
even close to reaching that kind of scale.
Lee mentioned that
IKS Consulting ranked Enforta as the largest wireless broadband
operator in Russia in June, 2007 but was quick to point out that they
had no hubris about this. They realize they are only in the first 5
meters of a 100 meter dash race.
I thought this was really interesting International news for WiMAX.
Tim Sanders,
www.TheFinalMile.net
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