Cirtek invests in US start up firm

MANILA, Philippines - Cirtek Holdings Philippines Corp. has acquired a stake in CloudMondo, a US-based start-up company that seeks to enable a global, high bandwidth, wireless access and backhaul platform.

Jerry Liu, chairman of Cirtek, said the investment in CloudMondo would enable the company to expand the business.

“We are pleased with the opportunity to be a strategic co-investor in CloudMondo. Our involvement puts [Cirtek] in an excellent position to jumpstart and expand our business from manufacturing to connectivity and content,” Cirtek Jery Liu said.

The start-up firm was founded by renowned Silicon Valley engineer, entrepreneur and philanthropist Dado Banatao, who also sits a chairman of CloudMondo.

For his part, CloudMondo CEO Ihab Abu-Hakima said the company envisions to establish a high-bandwidth WiFi network.

“In much of the developing world, WiFI access is too expensive and characterized by slow, unreliable connectivity. At the same time, you see the continuing growth of over-the-top (OTT) value-added services to address the growth in e-business. The vision of CloudMondo is to establish a global, high-bandwidth WiFi network and create a global marketplace for a broad portfolio of OTT services,” he said.

Cirtek is expected to manufacture and supply millimeterwave radios in the 60 to 80 GHz spectrum to Cloudmondo.

Leading global IT companies and e-commerce businesses like Apple, Paypal, Google and Facebook recently announced they are all moving toward using 60-80 GHz broadband wireless technology for connectivity as the world enters the era of Internet of Things (IoT).

In the early part of the year, the pilot and trial deployment of the CloudMondo network will take place with Manila among the pilot areas.

Thereafter, operations will be scaled up and expanded, initially in Southeast Asia.

Through its subsidiaries, Cirtek Holdings is primarily engaged in providing full service/turnkey solutions including wafer probing, wafer back grinding, assembly, and packaging and final testing of semiconductor devices, and offering complete manufacturing solutions for value- added, highly integrated radio frequency, microwave and millimeterwave technology products.