Rain appoints new CEO
Rain co-founder and CEO Brandon Leigh has stepped away from his executive position and moved into a strategic advisory role on the mobile network operator’s board.
Former chief operating officer Conrad Leigh has been appointed Rain’s new CEO. He also previously served as chief technology officer.
Brandon Leigh has been involved at the company since before it pivoted into LTE and 5G networking and changed its name from Multisource to Rain.
“Building Rain from a few people and a coffee machine to what it is now has been incredibly rewarding,” said Brandon Leigh.
“Conrad has played a critical role both operationally and strategically, and I have every confidence that he’s the ideal leader to guide Rain to future successes.”
In addition to serving on Rain’s board, Brandon will become CEO at RainX, where he will focus on product design and driving international expansion.
“I’m excited to guide Rain into its next chapter and build upon Brandon’s exceptional foundations,” said Conrad Leigh.
“We have strong momentum, and I look forward to leading the team as we take Rain to greater heights.”
RainX is a 5G hardware research and development company established by several of Rain’s co-founders in 2023.
When the United States Department of Commerce placed Chinese technology firms like Huawei on the Entity List in 2019, it didn’t just hurt those companies and their customers. It hobbled the progress of 5G worldwide.
Rain South Africa, which had gone all-in on 5G fixed wireless access (FWA) that year, soon began to feel the sting of the U.S. trade war with China.
Progress in the development of customer-premises equipment (CPE) stagnated. Routers with 5G capabilities remained expensive, and their Wi-Fi capabilities lagged.
High-end smartphones were quick to support early versions of 5G, with the functionality soon trickling down to mid-range devices. By 2024, 5G had started becoming available on devices at entry-level price points.
However, while the prices of 5G-supported smartphones have decreased, 5G CPEs have not enjoyed similar scale or price reductions.
Rain realised years ago that the trade war could be a significant potential threat to the ongoing development of 5G FWA unless a neutral party took action.
It looked for a partner to help develop the device it needed, but could not find any suitable companies at the time.
This resulted in Rain designing and manufacturing its own 5G router, the101, which it launched in 2023.
While this initial foray into consumer electronics was successful, Rain recognised that continuously developing and manufacturing such devices was not sustainable for a telecommunications company.
Rain CEO Brandon Leigh told MyBroadband in a previous interview that they soon realised hardware was a distraction from their core mission to provide excellent and affordable broadband connectivity.
For these reasons, several of Rain’s co-founders decided to establish a new company called RainX. Rain recently launched RainX’s “Loop” product in South Africa.
“Our shareholders and partners also didn’t sign up for Rain Africa to become a crazy startup. That’s not our mandate,” Leigh said.
“There’s no business case to say, ‘Let’s go make some drones.’ Even though I think it’d be quite fun, it’s not our business as Rain South Africa.”
Driving down the price of 5G routers worldwide
RainX was incorporated in Singapore and counts three Rain co-founders among its directors — Willem Roos, Roger Grobler, and Brandon Leigh.
Leigh declined to comment on the amount invested in RainX, only saying that future funding rounds will likely occur.
Their goal with RainX is to build scale and sell products that deliver high-quality 5G fixed wireless access worldwide, with Rain South Africa being just one potential customer.
At the same time, they are hoping to drive down the price of 5G CPEs. Leigh said RainX has partnered with MediaTek to develop high-quality routers that provide customers with a good Internet experience.
Asked why they chose to incorporate RainX in Singapore, Leigh said it all came down to logistics. He explained that South Africa was too far from chipmakers and other component manufacturers.
With RainX’s global ambitions, Singapore made more sense as it would allow the company to better serve the burgeoning Southeast Asian and European markets.
“Singapore just made sense as a — for of a lack of better word — ‘neutral’ place,” Leigh said.
“With China and the US… you don’t really know what’s coming.”
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