September 19, 2017 – Ottawa, Ontario- Edgewater Wireless Systems Inc. (YFI; TSX.V) is pleased to provide investors with an update on our business and activities.
The Cable Industry
Edgewater Wireless continues to enjoy and benefit from membership in the CableLabs and UpRamp family.
As recently as July, we announced our selection by the 5th largest Cable Operator in the United States, Mediacom Cable, for deployment in the exclusive, 500-acre luxury resort, Watercolors. Located on the Florida panhandle (and thankfully spared from the wrath of Hurricane Irma), all of our access points powered by WiFi3 are installed in the high-density areas of the resort and performing well. Look for some updates in the upcoming months as we aim to expand our relationship with Mediacom, building on the successes to date.
Buoyed by our early success with Mediacom, we’re continuing to work with the five other operators and partners from our UpRamp Fiterator participation announced earlier this year — varying in size, some are larger and some smaller than Mediacom — and across several market verticals. Our strategy in the cable industry is to demonstrate that WiFi3 provides relief from the challenges associated with high-density or high-interference deployments in multiple market verticals such as; entertainment venues, hospitality venues, campuses and more. We are also opening new opportunities within the Cable Industry in the United States as well as Europe and Asia.
As an industry, Cable is the largest consumer of WiFi equipment and they’re facing significant challenges to service and support their business and consumer customers. As we are all aware, WiFi increasingly faces service interruptions and performance issues due to the ever-increasing device density and interference issues. Through our engagement with the Cable Industry, we’re focused on solving major hurdles as the exponential growth in wireless devices continues – many CableCos are planning for 40-60 devices in the home! Edgewater Wireless was recruited into the Fiterator Accelerator program to solve some of the most significant issues in Cable WiFi services today and the future.
On that note, through our continued focus on the Cable Industry, and buoyed by our recent participation at the CableLabs summer conference, we are pleased to tell you that we have engaged with two additional Cable companies. Our momentum continues to grow throughout the Cable Industry.
For context on our success, it was a little over a year ago that this early stage technology company from Ottawa was being introduced to the $500 Billion Cable industry for the very first time. Fast forward to today where we are now engaged with 8 cable operators in North America and Europe.
We are extremely pleased with the growing interest by the Cable industry in our WiFi3 technology, software and extensive patent portfolio. We are gaining ground and building opportunity in the face of major competitors like Qualcomm, Broadcom and others, which, despite their marketing hype, have still not managed to solve the challenges of high density, capacity and interference using the traditional, single channel architecture approach. If they had, we would not be engaged to the level we are within the Cable industry where WiFi makes up 1/3 (and growing) of all customer service calls.
European update and global distributors
While we are primarily focused on working with our Fortune 500 partner (top 5 global retailer) and significant opportunities in the Cable Industry, we continue to execute our strategy of partnering on both the technology and commercial fronts. Technology partnerships give us a path to multiply our R&D efforts by selecting best in class and innovative partners who we then leverage to strengthen our solution (offering a complete package) or, in some cases, ramp production capabilities. While these are often not direct sales or near term revenue creation opportunities, they significantly reduce our R&D spending requirements or enhance our ability to scale for larger customer engagements.
Commercial sales partnerships, with great existing partners like Optima Networks, Wireless Republic or 2Plus, strengthen our efforts to scale our sales organization via in-direct channels. Notably, Optima has been amazingly supportive and very busy evangelizing multi-channel and WiFi3 — look for more updates in the upcoming months as we ramp AERA™ shipments. We have partnered with 2Plus in Israel to further strengthen our sales efforts in the Middle East and our friends at Wireless Republic recently launched www.wifi3.co.uk to continue to strengthen the position of WiFi3 technology for Europe and the United Kingdom
On a more serious note, our customer in Haiti at Port Lafito was spared from Hurricane Irma and our units continue to perform well in this very busy commercial port.
On the OEM and Licensing front, we’re pleased with the progress at our F500 customer. We’ve made some significant steps in our joint product development this year, from delivering and optimizing the world’s first multi-channel WiFi software driver to finalizing hardware designs – internal components and customer lead innovations. We’re increasingly excited about the engagement and we are working arm-in-arm with the customer’s R&D and Innovation team to bring to market this innovative product, which we believe will help reinvent how the industry approaches retail in-store technology infrastructure.
We are quite aware that the timeline for a broader joint announcement is taking longer than we had initially anticipated. We have heard you and want to reassure you the project is still moving forward and we’re working toward an announcement in the coming weeks.
As an update, Edgewater’s WiFi3 driver has reached final release. We and the F500 customer are very pleased with the work that our team has done.
Slippages are by no means uncommon in larger projects, particularly with multiple technology vendors involved. We will keep you updated as we continue to move forward with this exciting project. Overall, the opportunity with our F500 customer is very positive and we are also working closely with them to explore additional commercialization opportunities within the broader retail sector.
Several investors have asked, what is the significance of a patent continuation? What does it mean and why do it?
As a Technology company, we’re continually innovating and strengthening our Intellectual Property portfolio – an integral part of our strategy to maximize shareholder value. Recently, we were awarded a Patent Continuation (https://edgewaterwireless.com/edgewater-wireless-innovation-utilizing-packet-processing-feedback-to-improve-wifi-wireless-performance/) which is indicative of our strategy to build a cluster of patents protecting our multi-channel approach to WiFi. Continuation patents reduce the potential for industry players to design around patents — it’s like building a wall to protect our secret sauce. Each continuation in a patent cluster adds another brick in the wall, helping to expand and solidify the scope of exclusivity provided.
Our efforts to raise Edgewater Wireless’s profile have resulted in initial success with coverage & mention on BNN by leading analysts and fund managers, a sampling of whom can be found here:
CIBC Emerging Technology Report
Our Vision is to Make WiFi Better.
While Edgewater Wireless could follow the traditional, single-channel radio architecture or ‘single-lane road’ approach taken by the likes of Qualcomm, Broadcom etc., we’re innovating for the wireless future – where the exponential growth in connected devices continues to overburden the single lane roads.
Our path is to solve the next generation of WiFi where the limits of traditional WiFi architecture and the physical science of limited spectrum is already reaching its breaking point. Our opportunity is to solve the issues facing WiFi today, and the over years to come.
Together, with the support of our investors, our customers and our entire team, we will achieve success by building and innovating around our highly differentiated technology; WiFi3.
WiFi3 is innovative, it is disruptive and it is the future of WiFi.
About Edgewater Wireless Systems Inc.:
Edgewater Wireless develops and commercializes leading edge technologies and intellectual property for the communications market. Edgewater Wireless delivers advanced product solutions designed to meet the high-density, high quality of service (QoS) and high-reliability needs of service providers and their customers. Leveraging over twenty (20) patents, Edgewater’s WiFi3™ is redefining WiFi technology with its wide-band, multi-channel radio and high-capacity Access Point solutions, and delivering next generation WiFi, today.
The best solution for High-Density WiFi networks, Edgewater Wireless WiFi3™ powered access point products enable innovative service providers to plan, build and deploy reliable, high-capacity services (like VoWiFI) for high-density wireless data demand in any environment.
Do more with less! Fewer access points delivering high quality service at a lower overall deployment cost make our patented WiFi3™ technology the right choice for your next WiFi network.
Explore the evolution of WiFi at www.EdgewaterWireless.com and http://www.aera.io/
Forward-Looking Statements
This news release contains forward-looking statements and forward-looking information within the meaning of applicable securities laws. The use of any of the words “expect”, “anticipate”, “continue”, “estimate”, “objective”, “ongoing”, “may”, “will”, “project”, “should”, “believe”, “plans”, “intends” and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking information or statements. Although Edgewater Wireless believes that the expectations and assumptions on which such forward-looking statements and information are based are reasonable, undue reliance should not be placed on the forward looking statements and information because Edgewater Wireless can give no assurance that they will prove to be correct. By its nature, such forward-looking information is subject to various risks and uncertainties, which could cause Edgewater Wireless’ actual results and experience to differ materially from the anticipated results or expectations expressed. These risks and uncertainties, include, but are not limited to access to capital markets, market forces, competition from new and existing companies and regulatory conditions. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on this forward-looking information, which is given as of the date it is expressed in this news release or otherwise, and to not use future-oriented information or financial outlooks for anything other than their intended purpose. Edgewater Wireless undertakes no obligation to update publicly or revise any forward-looking information, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by law.
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