SmartCIC is a managed services provider based in Cannes, France. It provides IT solutions to corporations around the globe. Toby Forman, CEO of SmartCIC, says the company has been setting up fixed wireless access (FWA) networks for enterprises for several years.
Although SmartCIC has primarily focused on Europe, it has done work for companies in other locales such as Latin America and Asia. And it recently opened an office in Miami with plans to put more focus on U.S. enterprises.
SmartCIC sets up the kind of FWA that relies on capacity from mobile networks, as opposed to the type of point-to-point FWA historically built in rural areas where there wasn’t any decent wired broadband service available.
In the U.S. T-Mobile and Verizon are driving the uptake of home broadband service based on FWA. And they also provide a version of the service for business customers.
For its part, SmartCIC is strictly a business-to-business provider. It says it can enable rollouts of fixed wireless services in 10 days or less.
It provides enterprises with a router that works with the existing mobile services in their area. And it provides the enterprise with SIM cards to plug into the router. “We use intelligence from open source information and carrier information and our own global cellular performance survey to understand RF performance,” said Forman. “We send an engineer to the site equipped with the right SIMS.”
Forman makes it clear that the company is not a mobile network operator and doesn’t own infrastructure.
“We’re asset light,” he said. The company can help an enterprise subscribe to any carrier’s connectivity that performs best in a particular location.
It recently partnered with the Belgian company BICS, whose global network connects more than 700 mobile network operators across 2G, 3G, 4G, 5G and Nb-IoT. “Essentially, they [BICS] provide a global SIM platform, and we’re using that,” said Forman. “It gives us access to more roaming partners in more countries.”
It also works with a variety of router vendors including Cradlepoint, Sierra Wireless, Digi and MultiTech.
Forman said Avis is one of SmartCIC’s bigger customers.