Microwave backhaul vendor DragonWave reported a net loss of about $6.6 million for the quarter ended May 31, its fiscal first quarter of 2014. That figure is roughly half of the $12.6 million loss in the same period during the prior year.
Revenues for the quarter were up significantly year-over-year, to $24.5 million from $13 million in the same period of fiscal 2013, but dropped sequentially from $28.3 million. DragonWave said that revenues from its Nokia Siemens Networks channel accounted for 57% of its revenue for the quarter.
DragonWave said that the NSN relationship was renewed during the quarter, and included a cash payment of $13.8 million. The company also cited several market developments, including three major customers in India, southeast Asia and Africa that will be expanding their networks in its second fiscal quarter; the inclusion of its products in Cisco’s recently announced small cell backhaul ecosystem; and its involvement in a small cell wireless backhaul pilot program with a unnamed “major Asian carrier.”
In Wi-Fi news, Aruba Networks announced that the Ensign Group chose its solution for wireless access across more than 130 healthcare related sites. The company deployed two networks – one for patients and guests, one for employees – and according to Aruba, has installed 100 Aruba mobility controllers and 800 Aruba access points in its clients’ skilled nursing facilities, plus another 50 Aruba APs in its homecare and urgent care businesses.
IEEE has created a new group to look at the possibility of an amendment to the 802.11 standard for transit use in bridged networks. The standards group said the 802.11ak General Link (GLK) Task Group “will look at the potential and needs of IEEE 802.11 links to support home entertainment systems, industrial control equipment and other new products and applications that have both an IEEE 802.11 wireless station capability and a wired IEEE 802.3 ‘Standard for Ethernet’ capability.”
IEEE added that “GLK aims to substantially increase the utility of the wireless connection between IEEE 802.11 access points and associated wireless stations by removing previous limitation of such connections to the edge of the network. Instead, such connections will be usable as general transit links in the interior of bridged networks” and encouraged vendors, users, systems integrators and other stakeholders to participate in the development.
