General Bandwidth Inc., a telecommunications equipment manufacturer enabling the new voice infrastructure, announced the completion of $66 million in fourth-round venture funding. The funding was led by Invesco, an independent investment management firm. Texas Instruments, a provider of digital signal processing (DSP) and analog, and a provider of DSP-based silicon and software solutions for the broadband market, also joined the funding as General Bandwidth's newest strategic investor. Texas Instruments is also a supplier to General Bandwidth. Other new investors include Wheatley Partners and Granite Global Ventures.
This round brings the total funds raised by General Bandwidth to almost $150 million since its inception in 1999. The company raised $12 million in first round funding in September 1999, followed by $24 million in February 2000, and an additional $47 million last August. In addition to new investors, the latest round included investors from the three previous rounds, including Sevin Rosen Funds, Sequoia Capital, Oak Investment Partners, Venrock Associates, Trellis Partners, Thomas Weisel Capital Partners, CIT Venture Capital, and HLM Management.
General Bandwidth intends to use the funds to continue research-and-development efforts and to expand customer service and support capabilities as its large carrier customer base accelerates deployment of General Bandwidth's technology. The company has established its corporate infrastructure since its inception in 1999 and expects to increase current staff of 280 by five percent.
General Bandwidth's flagship product, the G6 multi-application platform, is designed specifically for large carriers, meeting the most stringent reliability and safety requirements, and providing a truly flexible platform for the migration to the new voice infrastructure. The G6 enables service providers to deploy voice over broadband with existing legacy telecom infrastructure, more efficiently aggregate and groom traffic from disparate access networks, and begin a graceful migration to softswitching technologies.
About General Bandwidth:
General Bandwidth, Inc. is developer of telecommunications equipment that is central to the build-out of the new voice infrastructure. The company is focused exclusively on developing solutions that meet or exceed the exacting requirements of large carriers. For more information, visit www.generalbandwidth.com.