Eucast’s ‘plug-and-play’ base stations can fill coverage gaps

Denver-based Eucast Global is bringing a South Korean-developed "network-in-a-box" technology to the U.S. market. Eucast’s plug-and-play base stations, which operate as a private network or integrate with an existing wide area network, have been widely deployed in Japan and South Korea and are now involved in trials in the U.S.

Gary Sumihiro, CEO of Sumihiro Investments, met Jaehyeong Kim, CEO of Eucast Co. Ltd. in South Korea and helped the company establish a separate Denver company, called Eucast Global, with the intention of selling and marketing the technology in North America. Sumihiro is a member of Eucast Global’s board of directors along with Chris Medina, chief strategy officer at Clovity, an IoT company based in San Francisco.  Betsy Markey, a former Colorado congresswoman, also sits on Eucast’s board of directors.

Sumihiro said that Eucast Global launched its Denver office in February and has been overwhelmed by the response to its technology. “We believe we have an opportunity for revenue between $7 million and $8 million this year,” he said, adding that the company is now looking for a facility to store its inventory.

Eucast earlier this month engaged with Castle Placement to help it raise $15 million in financing and Sumihiro is confident that the company won’t have any difficulty raising the funds.

Eucast is attracting the attention of first responders that want to use the self-contained technology to bring cell service into hard-to-reach areas; oil and gas companies and mining companies that want to use it as a turnkey private networking system; municipalities looking to solve the digital divide; and mobile operators that want to use Eucast base stations to boost their network coverage.

Medina said that Eucast’s base stations need a power source and a backhaul connection. That backhaul connection can come in the form of a cell tower or fiber connection. But in areas where there is no cell tower or fiber connectivity, the base station can connect to a satellite network for the backhaul.

Eucast’s boxes use Qualcomm’s Snapdragon chipsets and Medina said they can run on numerous spectrum bands —including Citizens Broadband Radio Spectrum (CBRS) and other mid-band spectrum, low-band spectrum and even millimeter wave (mmWave) spectrum. The base stations currently use LTE but will have a 5G version by year-end.

Sumihiro said Eucast is working with Comptek, a smart pole manufacturer that wants to incorporate Eucast base stations into Comptek’s poles. Comptek is involved in New York City’s LinkNYC initiative to provide a free citywide wireless network.

In addition, Eucast’s technology is also being eyed by tower companies that want to incorporate it into their tower sites as a way to provide more capacity to their operator customers.  And Medina even hinted that Tier 1 operators are interested in the technology as a small cell solution to boost capacity.

Backpack unit

Eucast also makes a self-contained backpack unit that was used by the South Korean military. Medina said that first responders are particularly interested in the backpack unit because they envision being able to go into areas with no signal and use it to communicate with other team members and send images back and forth.  

In addition, the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) is in discussions with the company to use Eucast base stations along highways like the I-70 corridor where rock slides and mud slides can wreak havoc on travelers and wipe out existing fiber connections.

Sumihiro said that while other companies may be working on similar solutions, Eucast’s product is commercially available today.

But Eucast isn't the first company to claim to have a rapidly deployable base station. Nokia introduced an LTE network in a box back in 2015 that it claimed could serve as a dedicated small network for public safety and industrial sites.