AccelerComm
AccelerComm is a spin-out from the University of Southampton. It offers game-changing technologies to enable 5G wireless systems to be 10-times faster than 4G, laying down the foundations for the future of wireless applications and services. It has created an advanced L1 Physical layer for high-performance networks, which is powering the first 5G basestations deployed on satellites in space.
The company is trying to reduce the power consumption of base stations – telecoms is responsible for a significant percentage of the world’s energy use. Customers want to keep their costs down so power consumption is a really significant factor. AccelerComm prioritise building more power efficient base stations that consume less energy, which would have a significant environmental impact.
The team make a wider social impact through thought leadership activities and seminars which contribute to standards which help steer the industry.
Rob Maunder, Founder and CTO, AccelerComm Ltd
2015
Start Date
Southampton
Location
80
Employees
£3.5m
Grants
£30m
Equity
The Journey
“After the Options Roundabout we had three weeks to develop the business plan to apply for Innovate UK Aid for Start Ups funding. We followed up several leads that were a direct result of the ICURe project. These were large international companies – Qualcomm, Huawei and Altera. We also started targeting for venture capital funding and building the team.”
“The input that we received through ICURe from the many conversations with stakeholders helped us write a business plan, and when we look back at that business plan eight years later, it’s still relevant. The approach we’re taking to the IP business model, the evolution of the roadmap, progressively adding more and more components until we got to the complete system – all of that is described in that business plan. ICURe also led to Innovate UK funding, which led to us getting mentoring from a colleague who had previously built her own telecoms company, from then we got further investment – so it all came from that incredibly useful ICURe programme.”
“We have now built a great technical and commercial team and successfully demoed our unmatched channel coding technology to the industry. In April 2023 we secured £21.5m in Series B funding to grow the team, drive US and global expansion, and develop our technology further as demand for our digital signal processing IP grows among mobile operators, telecoms equipment vendors, satellite operators and connected device manufacturers”.
“When we started, the company was focused on components of a 5G base station, and now we’ve evolved that to be more of a system level solution. A base station is made up of several code layers, and we’ve now got the whole of the most fundamental layer, which converts bits into radio and radio into bits – called the physical layer. Now we can licence the code for the whole of the physical layer to our customers.”
“In terms of revenue streams, the first is through a licencing fee, when we first engage with a customer and give them our IP, and they start integrating it, they pay us a licence fee. The secondary revenue stream is through a support fee, typically 10%. Thirdly, with larger potential is royalties, every time a customer buys, sells, or manufactures a device that has our IP inside of it, they pay us a royalty. We are working with some big customers in telecoms, who are deploying the technology. Our IP has applications in a variety of different directions. One direction we are focusing on is satellite application; a 5G base station in a satellite orbiting around the Earth, connected to 5G handsets on the ground.”
Rob Maunder, Founder and CTO, AccelerComm Ltd
Contact Form
Started on ICURe programme
Limited company formed
Private investment secured
£5.8m Series A investment
Winner of Global Mobile (GLOMO) award
Complete physical layer created
£21.5m Series B investment
Lockheed Martin lab demonstration of 5G basestation satellite including AccelerComm's complete physical layer
Grown team to 80 people
What companies had to say about the Innovate UK ICURe programme?
“ICURe enabled us to devote time to investigate how our research could address the real problems of the industry. We met with potential customers, including major multinationals in Europe, USA and Asia, and attended industry events to gain insight and fine-tune our target markets – it was a huge eye-opener for us.”
Rob Maunder
Founder and CTO
Future Goals
Now that the AccelerComm complete physical layer has been proven in the lab by Lockheed Martin, the next step is to deploy it on real satellites orbiting the Earth. There is a lot of momentum building behind filling 5G coverage gaps (so-called not-spots) with satellite coverage and AccelerComm has developed a strong head-start. In the coming years, tens of thousands of satellites will be launched by several satellite operators to provide 5G services around the world.