Paradise Mobile Opens up on 11th-Hour Mavenir Deal

LIVE FROM MWL UNWRAPPED: Bermuda-based Paradise Mobile CEO Sam Tabbara revealed it was weeks away from signing with one of the big traditional vendors to construct what will be the world’s fastest and most advanced 5G network before selecting open RAN pioneer Mavenir.

During a discussion with Antonio Correa, Mavenir’s senior regional VP for southern Europe, Caribbean and Latin America, Tabbara said it had spent a lot of time with the usual vendor suspects and a deal was imminent, before its partner AWS pushed it to consider Mavenir at the eleventh-hour.

“We did it out of professional courtesy, because we really thought we had no time to pivot. But Mavenir really did impress us from day one because we still were not 100 per cent sure we were making the right decision.”

He added Paradise Mobile shared the unique set of challenges Bermuda presented it with and “within days” Mavenir offered a full solution.

“Not only were they incredibly fast, they got it.”

The deal between the pair to build a cloud-native network was signed in February and Correa said it had now completed the necessary work, with a launch planned by the year-end.