Aviat Networks, Inc., together with its subsidiaries (Aviat), is a global supplier of microwave networking and wireless access networking solutions.
The company designs, manufactures and sells a range of wireless transport and access networking products, solutions and services to two principal customer types.
Communications Service Providers (CSPs): These include mobile and fixed telecommunications network operators, broadband and internet service providers and network operators which generate...
Aviat Networks, Inc., together with its subsidiaries (Aviat), is a global supplier of microwave networking and wireless access networking solutions.
The company designs, manufactures and sells a range of wireless transport and access networking products, solutions and services to two principal customer types.
Communications Service Providers (CSPs): These include mobile and fixed telecommunications network operators, broadband and internet service providers and network operators which generate revenues from the communications services that they provide.
Private Network Operators: These are customers which do not resell communications services but build networks for reasons of economics, autonomy, and/or security to support a wide variety of mission critical performance applications. Examples include federal, state and local government agencies, transportation agencies, energy and utility companies, public safety agencies and broadcast network operators around the world.
The company sells products and services directly to its customers, and, to a lesser extent, agents and resellers. The company’s products utilize microwave and millimeter wave technologies to create point to point and point to multi-point wireless links for short, medium and long-distance interconnections. In addition to its wireless products, the company also provides routers and a range of premise and hosted private cloud-based software tools and applications to enable deployment, monitoring, network management, and optimization and operational assurance of its systems as well as to automate network design and procurement. The company also sources, qualifies, supplies, integrates, tests and supports third party equipment, such as antennas, optical transmission equipment and other equipment necessary to build and deploy a complete telecommunications transmission network. The company provides a full suite of professional services for planning, deployment, operations, optimization and maintenance of its customers’ networks.
The company’s wireless systems deliver urban, suburban, regional and country-wide communications links as the primary alternative to fiber optic, low earth orbit satellite and copper connections. Fiber optic connections are the primary connectivity alternative to wireless systems.
Strategy
The company is engaging with customers on the evolution of use cases and applications as 5G mobile and broadband networks edge closer to implementation and begin to factor more strongly in the vendor selection process. The company is confident in its ability to address current and future 5G market needs.
The company focuses on building a sustainable and profitable business with growth potential. The company has invested in its people and processes to create a platform for operational excellence across sales, services, product development and supply chain areas while continuing to make investments in strengthening its product and services portfolio and expanding its reach into targeted market areas.
The company’s strategy has three main elements aligned to deliver a compelling Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) value proposition. The first is its portfolio of wireless transport products allowing its customers increased capacity and flexibility with a much better total cost solution. The company is expanding the data-carrying capacity of its wireless products to address the increasing data demand in networks of all types, while reducing overall energy consumption. The company’s research and development focuses on innovations that increase capacity, reduce energy consumption and lower overall TCO.
Second, to address the operational complexity of planning, deploying, owning and operating microwave networks, the company is investing in a combination of software applications, tools and services where simplification, process automation, optimization and performance assurance, combined with its unique expertise in wireless technology can make a significant difference for its customers and partners.
Finally, Aviat is investing in e-commerce through its online platform, the Aviat Store and supporting supply chain capabilities. Aviat can better service customers buying through the Aviat Store with lower costs, faster lead times and a simpler purchasing experience. The Aviat Store, together with its supply chain, enables customers (including ISP, Tier 2 and mobile 5G operators) to purchase products as needed, thus avoiding lengthy and variable lead times that come with other vendor solutions and allowing those customers to lower warehousing costs, reduce obsolete equipment, and lower the cost of capital by paying only when equipment is needed.
The company continues to develop its professional services portfolio as key to its long-term strategy and differentiation. The company offers a portfolio of hosted expert services and it continues to offer training and accreditation programs for microwave and IP network design, deployment and maintenance.
The company expects to continue to serve and expand upon its existing customer base and develop business with new customers. The company intends to leverage its customer base, longstanding presence in many countries, distribution channels, comprehensive product line, superior customer service and its turnkey solution capability to continue to sell existing and new products and services to customers.
Products and Solutions
The company’s product and solutions portfolio is key to building and maintaining its base of customers. The company offers a comprehensive product and solutions portfolio that meets the needs of service providers and network operators and that addresses a broad range of applications, frequencies, capacities and network topologies.
Broad Product and Solution Portfolio: The company offers a comprehensive suite of wireless transport and access systems for microwave and millimeter wave networking applications. These solutions utilize a wide range of transmission frequencies, ranging from 450 MHz to 90 GHz, and can deliver a wide range of transmission capacities, ranging up to 20 Gigabits per second (Gbps). The major product families included in these solutions are CTR 8000, WTM 4000, RDL 3000, FDL 6000, IRU 600 UHP and AviatCloud. The company’s CTR 8000 platform is a range of routers purpose-built for transport applications, especially those that require high level of reliability and security. WTM 4000, the highest capacity microwave radio ever produced to date, and purpose built for software-defined networks (SDN). SDN technology is an approach to networking management that enables dynamic, programmatically efficient networking configuration to improve networking performance and monitoring, making it more like cloud computing than traditional networking management. The company introduced multiple important variants to the WTM 4000 platform; WTM4100 & 4200 providing single and dual frequency microwave links with advanced XPIC and MIMO capabilities; WTM4500 for multi-channel aggregation of microwave channels in long distance applications; WTM4800 is the latest addition to address 5G network requirements and is capable of operating in the 80GHz E Band at up to 20Gbps capacity, with a unique Multi-Band capability which simultaneously uses microwave and E Band frequencies for maximum capacity, distance and reliability. WTM 4800 is the only single box multi-band solution for lowest total cost of ownership deployments. The company’s RDL 3000 platform is designed to support ruggedized fixed and nomadic wireless access in remote and industrial applications. RDL 6000 is a highly differentiated Private-LTE solution that provides the equivalent coverage of a macro-base station, but in a compact and cost-effective all-outdoor design. The company’s IRU 600 UHP is an ultra-high power indoor microwave radio that enables relocation of mission critical links from the 6 GHz band to the 11 GHz band to minimize potential interference and deliver longer links and more capacity. To address the issues of operational complexity in its customers’ networks, AviatCloud is a platform with secure hosted software and services to automate networks and their operations.
Low Total Cost of Ownership: The company’s wireless-based solutions focus on achieving a low total cost of ownership, including savings on the combined costs of initial acquisition, installation and ongoing operation and maintenance. The company’s latest generation system designs reduce rack space requirements, require less power, are software-configurable to reduce spare parts requirements, and are simple to install, operate, upgrade and maintain. The company’s advanced wireless features also enable operators to save on related costs, including spectrum fees and tower rental fees.
Futureproof Network: The company’s solutions are designed to protect the network operator’s investment by incorporating software-configurable capacity upgrades and plug-in modules that provide a smooth migration path to Carrier Ethernet and IP/MPLS (multiprotocol label switching) and segment routing based networking, without the need for costly equipment substitutions and additions.
Flexible, Easily Configurable Products: The company uses flexible architectures with a high level of software configurable features. This design approach produces high-performance products with reusable components while at the same time allowing for a manufacturing strategy with a high degree of flexibility, improved cost and reduced time-to-market. The software features of its products offer its customers a greater degree of flexibility in installing, operating and maintaining their networks.
Comprehensive Network Management: The company offers a range of flexible network management solutions, from element management to enterprise-wide network management and service assurance that the company can optimize to work with its wireless systems.
Complete Professional Services: In addition to its product offerings, the company provides network planning and design, site surveys and builds, systems integration, installation, maintenance, network monitoring, training, customer service and many other professional services. The company’s services cover the entire evaluation, purchase, deployment and operational cycle and enablesthe company to be one of the few complete, turnkey solution providers in the industry.
Business Operations
Sales and Service
The company’s primary route to market is through its own direct sales, service and support organization. This provides the company with the best opportunity to leverage its role as a technology specialist and differentiate ourselves from competitors. The company’s focus on key customers and geographies allows it to consistently achieve a high level of customer retention and repeat business. The company’s highest concentrations of sales and service resources are in the United States, Western and Southern Africa, the Philippines, and the European Union. The company maintains a presence in a number of other countries, some of which are based in customer locations and include, but not limited to, Canada, Mexico, Kenya, India, Saudi Arabia, Australia, New Zealand, and Singapore.
In addition to its direct channel to market, the company has relationships with original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and system integrators especially focused towards large and complex projects in national security and government-related applications. The company’s role in these relationships ranges from equipment supply only to being a sub-contractor for a portion of the project scope where the company will supply equipment and a variety of design, deployment and maintenance services.
The company also uses indirect sales channels, including dealers, resellers and sales representatives, in the marketing and sale of some lines of products and equipment on a global basis. These independent representatives may buy for resale or, in some cases, solicit orders from commercial or governmental customers for direct sales by the company.
The company has a direct online sales option through its online Aviat Store. The Aviat Store targets customers with a traditional high cost to serve via traditional channels. The company provides online design tools for radio link planning and online ordering tools, which the company fulfill directly from its Aviat Store with multiple options of product available for next day shipment. Shipments from Aviat Store commenced in late 2018.
The company has repair and service centers in the Philippines and the United States. The company has customer service and support personnel who provide customers with training, installation, technical support, maintenance and other services on systems under contract. The company installs and maintains customer equipment directly, in some cases, and contract with third-party service providers in other cases.
Competition
The company’s principal competitors include business units of large mobile and IP network infrastructure manufacturers, such as Ericsson, Huawei and Nokia Corporation, as well as a number of smaller microwave specialist companies such as Ceragon Networks Ltd., SIAE Microelectronica S.p.A., Cambium Networks Corporation and Airspan Networks.
Research and Development
The company’s research and development expenditures totaled $24.9 million for the year ended June 30, 2023.
Patents and Other Intellectual Property
As of June 30, 2023, the company (collectively with its subsidiaries) owned approximately 339 U.S. patents and 237 international patents and had 14 U.S. patent applications pending and 28 international patent applications pending. The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and international equivalent bodies have not yet concluded substantive examination of its pending patent applications.
Environmental and Other Regulations
From time to time, the company receives notices from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency or equivalent state or international environmental agencies that it is a potentially responsible party under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act, which is commonly known as the Superfund Act, and equivalent laws.
History
The company was incorporated in Delaware in 2006. It was formerly known as Harris Stratex Networks, Inc. and changed its name to Aviat Networks, Inc. in 2010.
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