Mobile World Live (MWL) learned US open RAN vendor Mavenir made significant cuts to its marketing team last week, a move potentially highlighting how the sector has shifted from selling the concept to grappling with the challenges of deployment.
In response to MWL‘s request for comment on the matter, Maryvonne Tubb, SVP of global marketing and corporate communications for Mavenir, said the company grew from 3,200 employees two years ago to 6,000 in May 2022.
“Like any other company, we are looking at ways to optimize as we go further,” she stated. “Our headcount at the end of the year will be the same but we may hire people with different skills.”
The move is likely indicative of the evolving nature of the open RAN market, which is now moving past the hype and marketing stage to solid commercial deployments.
Mavenir rival Parallel Wireless announced mass layoffs, including most of its marketing department, in late June.
While Mavenir has more recently made a name for itself as an open RAN vendor, it also generates revenue across OSS/BSS, private networks, IMS core, VoLTE and packet core offerings.
On its website, Mavenir states it does business with more than 250 service providers and enterprises that serve more than 50 percent of the world’s subscribers across 120 countries.
Its customer roster includes Verizon, Turkcell, Telefonica Hispanoamerica and Dish Network.
The company announced and then dropped a plan for an IPO in 2020, but later raised $500 million by selling a minority equity stake to Koch Strategic Platforms.
Documents filed as part of the aborted IPO showed Mavenir recorded a net loss of $81 million on revenue of $427.4 million in its fiscal 2019.
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