About Pardeep Kohli
In February 2017, Pardeep Kohli discussed the formation of a "new Mavenir," created through the combination of three companies—Ranzure, Mitel Mobile, and Mavenir—over a six-month period. Kohli stated that the combined entity offers a complete end-to-end wireless network portfolio based on software-only, virtualized solutions, positioning it for 5G deployment. He described the company as having about 2,500 people and $400 million in revenue, and characterized it as "number one" among companies focused purely on open software for the full portfolio, while noting that larger vendors like Ericsson, Nokia, Huawei, and ZTE remain focused on proprietary, hardware-centric solutions.
Kohli also addressed industry trends, saying that operators face cost pressure from data growth without corresponding revenue increases. He argued that operators must adopt approaches similar to those used by IT companies like Google and Facebook, including open-source software and data center-based architectures, to avoid a potential "meltdown." In a 2015 overview, Kohli described Mavenir's focus on enabling operators to migrate voice, SMS, and MMS services to IP-based LTE networks, and to compete with over-the-top players like WhatsApp and Skype by providing technologies such as Rich Communication Services (RCS) for messaging, video calling, and file sharing.
Source: AI-verified profile updated from Pardeep Kohli's recent appearances.
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Transcript (12 segments)
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Tony Pulis0:02
I'm Tony Pulis and I'm at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona today with Paddy Kohli, who is the CEO of Mavenir. Great to meet you. Great week for you. Very big news. What was the big announcement this week?
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Pardeep Kohli0:17
Well, we announced that Mitel has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Mavenir Systems. We're quite excited about it. I would like to talk for a minute upon that announcement. As you know, Mitel is a very big player in the enterprise space, a billion dollar revenue in the enterprise space. People have already moved on to all IP and unified communication applications. We were in the mobile space. We are in the mobile space. In mobile space, 4G LTE is doing exactly the same thing: bringing networks to all IP. And Mavenir is helping operators to make the transition to all IP environment. And we will use the experience that Mitel has already done in the enterprise space to enhance that and enable operators to do more than what they are able to do today and bring unified communications in an all IP environment.
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Tony Pulis1:11
And what changes can operators expect from NFV and SDN architectures?
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Pardeep Kohli1:14
Yes, so as you know, in the telecom environment, operators expect very highly reliable systems. In the past, people believed that highly reliable systems can be offered only if you run them on proprietary hardware. But what the IT industry has grown, like Facebook, Google and other companies, has shown that you can actually do scalable architectures without using proprietary systems. So now with NFV and SDN technologies, what operators are trying to do is bring their networks to be able to do things without using proprietary systems, and they will be using the concept of virtualization and software-defined networking to separate software from hardware and not rely on proprietary hardware, and to be able to use just general purpose hardware to offer their services. This will bring down cost, it will make it easier for them to introduce new services, it will help them manage their networks in a much better way.
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Tony Pulis2:16
And what makes VoLTE different from traditional voice, and how are operators going to benefit from it?
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Pardeep Kohli2:22
Yeah, that's a good question. We are a big player in that market. As you probably saw, in the enterprise space, in the fixed wire space, when people had internet at their home, you didn't have analog lines for your phone, right? So you ended up just moving all the services onto internet. It's the same thing happening in a wireless network. When you do 4G LTE, think of that as bringing internet to home. Now you're bringing internet to a mobile phone, and now there's no point using any other way of delivering the voice. You have to do voice on LTE. How it helps the operator: they now can have only one network for everything, for voice and data, rather than keeping a separate network for voice and a separate for data.
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Tony Pulis3:05
When you say that the network of the future will be built on software, what exactly do you mean by that?
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Pardeep Kohli3:11
Yeah, so actually, you know, I tell my customers and also my employees today: the phone is more intelligent than the network. And this is the first time it has happened in the wireless industry. If you remember, in the past, we used to have GSM phones and UMTS phones, very little screen and only nine buttons, and it could do very, very little amount of stuff, right. Now when the phone is like a big computer, you can pretty much do everything you can do on a computer on the phone. But that means now that the network has to catch up with the phone, rather than the phone being run by the network. And that can only happen if the network is also software-based. It's not only hardware to do certain things. It is very agile, it can adapt itself, you can introduce new services very fast, you can try new things very fast. And that's what I meant by when I say the network has to become software driven now.
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Tony Pulis4:11
And with the success of VoLTE, what other services can we expect on these networks?
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Pardeep Kohli4:13
So I think now there's no limit. But what it did was give you what you had in the past, right. So people have done a very simple transition: now whatever you were able to do on 3G can be done on 4G with VoLTE and all IP. But that's just a very small part. Now what you can do with these phones is unlimited. For example, we are showing in our booth a number of services which you could not do in the past only on 3G, like combining voice and video together. I could say, okay, here I am, show you a picture, and then immediately go back and start talking again right. Things like that are much easier to do in an all IP environment, and those will be possible to do now beyond VoLTE today.
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Tony Pulis5:02
Thank you so much for explaining that to me, and congratulations on the big acquisition announcement.
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Pardeep Kohli5:05
Thank you, thank you very much.
