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Russia's Enforta is Experiencing Exploding Growth in WiMAX Services
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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