Parallel Wireless chair, CEO and co-founder Steve Papa (pictured) took to LinkedIn to assure the open RAN vendor’s customers it was still moving forward despite announcing mass layoffs in late June.

In a post, Papa explained helping employees find new roles was a top priority, alongside restructuring remaining positions. He also assured current and prospective customers Parallel Wireless remained a viable option in the broader open RAN market, indicating it would adopt a longer-term view in future than it had in the past.

“Our rollouts will continue, our RAN R&D will continue and we will continue to innovate in partnership with MNOs,” he stated.

Parallel Wireless felt pressure from customers to “sprint” to solve various technical needs for a wide variety of global mobile networks.

“We mutually concluded with MNOs that instead of a sprint, we should be managing for a marathon.”

Papa added the Covid-19 (coronavirus) environment led to longer development times, supply chain issues and a slower pace of adoption of open RAN technologies. “While there are plenty of forced and unforced errors in our sprint that we could debate, they are part and parcel to any ambitious undertaking.”

Parallel Wireless was founded in 2012 and counts Vodafone Group, Axiata Group and MTN Group as customers.

Analysts last week told Mobile World Live they remained optimistic about Parallel Wireless’ prospects despite the job cuts.

The Mobile Network reported the company had about 1,000 employees with possibly 700 to 800 laid off.