A Seattle-area startup has raised cash to fuel expansion of its mobile broadband service used by Internet of Things machine operators.
Teal Communications raised $1 million from StageDotO, an early stage investment fund with offices in Seattle, London and Santa Monica, Calif.
The year-old company sells eSIM chips to customers that need mobile broadband connectivity for their IoT devices. The chips work across major carriers and users pay a per-gigabyte rate with no coverage fees, roaming costs, or throttling. Teal Communications is able to sell them at a lower cost compared to other mobile broadband providers.
“Our offering is cheaper because our tech lets us use more than one supplier for the data access,” said Teal Communications CEO Robby Hamblet. “This also lets us stay more flexible over time as data rates from wholesalers change.”
Use cases include a drone manufacturer who wants to enable their drone with a 4G service.
“In addition to being cheaper than other mobile broadband providers, we add some additional features like customized subscriptions and redundant network designs to make sure that the device will always operate on the best network,” Hamblet said.
The company employs five people. Hamblet was previously an engineer at Globetouch, an IoT connectivity giant. He co-founded Teal Communications with Michael Johnston. One of the company’s advisors is Perry Saterlee, former COO of Nextel and Clearwire Communications.
