Airspan Partners with Jio for Deployment of Ultra-Dense Heterogeneous LTE-Advanced Small-cells

BARCELONA, SPAIN--(Marketwired - February 27, 2017) - Airspan Networks Inc. ("Airspan") announced today the integration of Airspan's small cells into the Reliance Jio Infocomm Limited ("Jio") LTE network. Jio, the world's largest all-IP wireless broadband network, has successfully deployed thousands of Airspan small cells, carrying more than 350 TB of data and terminating more than five million VoLTE calls daily.

Jio is the world's fastest growing mobile operator, acquiring 100 million LTE subscribers in record time and experiencing an unprecedented rate of data adoption and usage. Jio is partnering with Airspan to deploy a network of small cells and small cell backhaul products in total to provide coverage and capacity for delivering high speed broadband data, voice, and digital services across India.

Wireless carriers around the world face the challenge of keeping up with increasing capacity demands of data hungry users while evolving to outpace new market entrants in the race to 5G. Jio is at the forefront of this race, and the two companies have partnered through an extensive design, development, integration, and deployment cycle in record time to create a cost efficient indoor capacity tool for use today. The design provides a strong path towards 5G with the same tools and building blocks, allowing a further quantum leap in capacity.

"We are driving a digital platform and broadband network movement to meet the expectations of a data hungry nation," said Mathew Oommen, president, Reliance Jio. "By leveraging a Smart HetNet model supported and orchestrated by a cloud centric SON framework, Jio and Airspan have completely changed the traditional macro-centric deployment models and enabled Jio to proactively and rapidly address data demand through targeted deployments." Mr. Oommen went on to say, "Together, we have been able to innovate on products and solutions that have fundamentally disrupted cost and service models, ensuring that Jio's self-healing HetNet will be able to seamlessly transition to 5G."

Mr. Eric Stonestrom, Airspan's CEO added, "Airspan thrives on invention and disrupting outdated traditional equipment manufacturers. This is our exclusive mission. The accomplishments with Jio make us very proud and we are grateful for the trust and cooperation that has been extended by the phenomenal Jio team."

About Reliance Jio Infocomm Limited:

Reliance Jio Infocomm Limited ("Jio"), a subsidiary of Reliance Industries Limited ("RIL"), has built a world-class all-IP data strong future proof network with latest 4G LTE technology. It is the only network conceived and born as a Mobile Video Network from the ground up and supporting Voice over LTE technology. It is future ready and can be easily upgraded to support even more data, as technologies advance on to 5G, 6G and beyond.

Jio will bring transformational changes in the Indian digital services space to enable the vision of Digital India for 1.2 billion Indians and propel India into global leadership in digital economy. It has created an eco-system comprising network, devices, applications and content, service experience and affordable tariffs for everyone to live the Jio Digital Life. As part of its customer offers, Jio has revolutionised the Indian telecom landscape by making voice calls for Jio customers absolutely free, across India, to any network, and always. Jio makes India the highest quality, most affordable data market in the world so that every Indian can do Datagiri.

About Airspan Networks Inc.:

Airspan (OTC PINK: AIRO) is a leading LTE RAN solution provider, with over 1000 customers in over 100 countries. Airspan is regularly recognized as a leader and pioneer in LTE Access and innovative Backhaul solutions. Airspan has an expansive product portfolio, which includes indoor and outdoor small cells, and all-outdoor, compact Micro and Macro base stations, a variety of user devices and network optimization products. These connectivity solutions operate in bands from 400 MHz up to 6.4 GHz and 60-80GHz millimeter wave. www.airspan.com.

Oak Investment Partners XI, Limited Partnership holds a controlling interest in Airspan. Airspan is not subject to the informational reporting requirements of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and, accordingly, does not file reports, financial statements, proxy statements, information statements or other information with the Securities and Exchange Commission. This press release contains forward-looking statements. All statements, other than statements of historical facts, including statements regarding our strategy, future operations, financial position, future revenues, projected costs, prospects, plans and objectives of management, may be deemed to be forward-looking statements. The words "anticipates," "believes," "estimates," "expects," "intends," "may," "plans," "projects," "will," "would" and similar expressions or negative variations thereof are intended to identify forward-looking statements, although not all forward-looking statements contain these identifying words. We may not actually achieve the plans, intentions or expectations disclosed in our forward-looking statements and you should not place undue reliance on our forward-looking statements. There are a number of important factors that could cause actual results or events to differ materially from the plans, intentions and expectations disclosed in the forward-looking statements we make. Investors and others are therefore cautioned that a variety of factors, including certain risks, may affect our business and cause actual results to differ materially from those set forth in the forward-looking statements. We do not assume any obligation to update any forward-looking statements.