Japan’s IoT-optimized cellular operator Soracom raises $22M series B for global expansion

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Image credit: Soracom

Japan’s Soracom, which offers mobile data communication over its platform, announced today the raising of $2.4 billion yen (about $22 million) in a series B round. In addition to World Innovation Lab (WiL) and Infinity Venture Partners (IVP) that participated in the previous round, several VC firms and other businesses joined this round although their names have not been disclosed. With this funding, the company garners a total of 3.1 billion yen (about $28 million) since its launch back in March of 2015.

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According to Soracom, they will use the funds centering on expansion over the global market, in particular catering toward the Europeans in their home markets where mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs) are more commonplace than in the US. In Japan, the dominant mobile network operator NTT docomo is dealing with Soracom for wholesale (L2 classification) as an MVNO.

Soracom has been providing mobile network services called Soracom Air and Soracom Beam through use of NTT docomo’s mobile base stations in its home market. Soracom Air features a core network (packet switches, line management and band limits) and a support system (customer management or charge billing) that are proprietary developments as implemented on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud. As for Soracom Beam, encryption, protocol conversion and data transfer to on-premise or cloud servers are being handled at the Soracom side.

Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy

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