Mobile broadband gateway provider Stoke says it has raised $17 million in Series E funding, bringing the company's total financing to date to about $92 million.
Stoke needs the funding to hire new people and ramp up manufacturing amid increased demand for its wireless infrastructure equipment, which is currently being used by Japanese operator NTT DoCoMo for its femtocell service and LTE network.
The financing round included participation from existing investors and was led by new investor Focus Ventures, which was a major investor in mobile infrastructure company Starent Networks. Starent was acquired by Cisco for $2.9 billion in 2009.
Dan McBride, Stoke's director of product solutions and marketing, says the company plans to nearly double its workforce by the end of this year as its mobile broadband gateways gain traction with operators.
"What Stoke brings to the table is a fresh perspective, and it's playing out quite a bit with the operators we're engaged with," McBride says. "We've seized on idea that the legacy thinking of incumbents is keeping them from thinking outside the box."
The company said in a statement that it has new LTE and 3G network optimization projects with unnamed "top tier carriers in Europe, Asia and the U.S." McBride said the company may announce new customer wins at Mobile World Congress in February, or in the first half of this year.
The company said it closed 2010 with sales more than four times greater than 2009, and expects triple digit growth again in 2011, but has not disclosed specific financial results.
Stoke shipped its two-hundredth SSX-3000 hallmark mobile broadband gateway in December, doubling the number of the gateways sold since August, when the company shipped its hundredth SSX-3000.
The mobile broadband gateway sits between a carrier's radio access network and its core network, where it offloads mobile data traffic to the nearest Internet Protocol point. Stoke's equipment is capable of redirecting both data and services.