\u201cBuilding Rain from a few people and a coffee machine to what it is now has been incredibly rewarding,\u201d said Brandon Leigh.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cConrad has played a critical role both operationally and strategically, and I have every confidence that he\u2019s the ideal leader to guide Rain to future successes.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In addition to serving on Rain\u2019s board, Brandon will become CEO at RainX, where he will focus on product design and driving international expansion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI\u2019m excited to guide Rain into its next chapter and build upon Brandon\u2019s exceptional foundations,\u201d said Conrad Leigh.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe have strong momentum, and I look forward to leading the team as we take Rain to greater heights.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
RainX is a 5G hardware research and development company established by several of Rain\u2019s co-founders<\/a> in 2023.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When the United States Department of Commerce placed Chinese technology firms like Huawei on the Entity List in 2019<\/a>, it didn\u2019t just hurt those companies and their customers. It hobbled the progress of 5G worldwide.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Rain South Africa, which had gone all-in on 5G fixed wireless access<\/a> (FWA) that year, soon began to feel the sting of the U.S. trade war with China.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Progress in the development of customer-premises equipment (CPE) stagnated. Routers with 5G capabilities remained expensive, and their Wi-Fi capabilities lagged.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n However, while the prices of 5G-supported smartphones have decreased, 5G CPEs have not enjoyed similar scale or price reductions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It looked for a partner to help develop the device it needed, but could not find any suitable companies at the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This resulted in Rain designing and manufacturing its own 5G router, the101, which it launched in 2023<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Rain CEO Brandon Leigh told MyBroadband in a previous interview<\/a> that they soon realised hardware was a distraction from their core mission to provide excellent and affordable broadband connectivity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For these reasons, several of Rain\u2019s co-founders decided to establish a new company called RainX<\/a>. Rain recently launched RainX\u2019s \u201cLoop\u201d<\/a> product in South Africa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cOur shareholders and partners also didn\u2019t sign up for Rain Africa to become a crazy startup. That\u2019s not our mandate,\u201d Leigh said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThere\u2019s no business case to say, \u2018Let\u2019s go make some drones.\u2019 Even though I think it\u2019d be quite fun, it\u2019s not our business as Rain South Africa.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n RainX was incorporated in Singapore and counts three Rain co-founders among its directors \u2014 Willem Roos, Roger Grobler, and Brandon Leigh.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Leigh declined to comment on the amount invested in RainX, only saying that future funding rounds will likely occur.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n With RainX\u2019s global ambitions, Singapore made more sense as it would allow the company to better serve the burgeoning Southeast Asian and European markets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cSingapore just made sense as a \u2014 for of a lack of better word \u2014 \u2018neutral\u2019 place,\u201d Leigh said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWith China and the US\u2026 you don\u2019t really know what\u2019s coming.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Former Rain CEO Brandon Leigh will move into a strategic advisory role on the mobile network operator\u2019s board and become CEO of RainX.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":603798,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[33681,81339,7521,43716,97929],"class_list":["post-603797","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-telecoms","tag-brandon-leigh","tag-conrad-leigh","tag-multisource","tag-rain","tag-rainx"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/603797"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=603797"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/603797\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":603802,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/603797\/revisions\/603802"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/603798"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=603797"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=603797"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=603797"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Driving down the price of 5G routers worldwide<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/Rain-RainX-Willem-Roos-Roger-Grobler-Brandon-Leigh-UPDATED.jpg\")