By KRYSTLE CHOW
Published on OBJ.ca.
Feb. 7, 2011

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Texas company created around $650,000 Nortel asset acquisition

Carleton (Mickey) Miller says his Plano, Texas-based company, BLiNQ Networks Inc., has big plans for Ottawa and the locally developed Nortel wireless technology BLiNQ acquired in 2010.

“We’re launching our product in the first half of the year, then we’re doing lab trials and … field trials in Ottawa,” says Mr. Miller, who was recently appointed as BLiNQ’s chief executive.

The company was founded in June 2010 after obtaining court approvals for its $650,000 acquisition of Nortel Networks’s intellectual property and wireless assets.

Now, BLiNQ is out of stealth mode, announcing on Monday that it’s obtained $7.4 million in series-A funding from New Venture Partners, Summerhill Venture Partners and the Business Development Bank of Canada, and set up research and development facilities in Ottawa.

Mr. Miller says BLiNQ has approximately 20 local staff, making up more than 50 per cent of the firm’s total head count.

He notes the company is built entirely around Nortel’s homegrown intelligent non-line-of-sight wireless backhaul research.

The technology makes it easier and more cost-effective to send wireless traffic back to mobile operators, amid the ongoing concerns of greater demands on networks, coupled with smaller cell base stations in dense urban areas that are stretched for capacity.

“We’ll continue on with the deployment of our first-generation product, and we have a growth roadmap … With demand for higher throughput and more features, we will be doing more hiring (in Ottawa),” Mr. Miller adds.