Under the leadership of a new CEO, CMO and channel chief, Inseego is refreshing its approach to the channel and releasing a new 5G cellular router, which the company says is ‘the perfect solution” for the channel.
Inseego, a provider of enterprise-grade 5G wireless and IoT offerings, is introducing a new channel model to support its ambitious partner plans.
The company worked with channel partners in the past in an “opportunistic” fashion, but now, Inseego is revamping its Ignite partner program with resources geared toward strategic service providers, mobility connectivity VARs, and global IT resellers. Inseego aims to simplify business processes, reduce costs, and enhance partner profitability.
Zack Kowalski, senior vice president of business development and channel chief for Inseego, said that the company, which in the past has largely worked with carriers, plans to make business through the channel a “very meaningful” portion of its revenue going forward.
“There’s a strategic focus to really grow that percentage of revenue overall across the business, and not just from within the channel team, but as a company overall,” said Kowalski (pictured above).
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Alongside the refreshed partner strategy is a new 5G cellular router — the FX 4200 — to support instant connectivity, remote cloud management and multi-carrier fixed wireless access (FWA). The next-generation device, according to the company, is expected to drive significant interest and adoption of private cellular in the market.
Juho Sarvikas, the former president of North America at Qualcomm, joined Inseego at the start of 2025 as the company’s new CEO. Since then, the executive has been working on growing the team and the company beyond just its carrier customer base. Inseego has since added a new CMO, Donna Johnson, to the firm in September, as well as Kowalski, who joined the company in July.
Inseego believes that now is the time to go after channel partners, including MSPs, VARs, and distributors, to bring fixed wireless access (FWA) and 5G to more businesses.
“I think with the carrier business, there comes a time where you reach a cap and the growth potential is not there. We’ve done really well with the carriers, [but] we feel we’re about to reach that cap very soon, but we have a lot more to offer to the market. The channel is really the answer to really allow us to take our capabilities forward.”
The Ignite partner program required a “buff and polish” to meet the needs of the company’s new channel charter, Kowalski said. Going after the three major partner groups — strategic service providers, mobility connectivity VARs, and distributors — allows Inseego to be specific with how it addresses the different needs of the partners in its program, Kowalski said.
“This allows us to compare apples to apples, as opposed to apples to oranges, as far as tiering and performance within the partner program,” he said. “[We’re] really taking a very purposeful approach in how we look at our partner programs, splitting it into those three, and ensuring we have the right talent to work with those three groups to make them successful.”
The company is also launching for the first time an official MDF program that will support specific solution launches in 2026, Kowalski said.
“When a new solution launches to market, there’ll be an MDF program to follow that to help partners really accelerate the initial interest,” he said.
CTS Mobility, an Austin-based VAR specializing in mobility managed services and device-as-a-service, has been an Inseego partner since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic when the firm got into mobile Wi-Fi (Mi-Fi). The partnership has since evolved to include 5G solutions, according to Pete Dunn, IoT and FWA sales leader for CTS Mobility.
Inseego’s previous partner program was not well-defined and lacked support in terms of resources for partners, such as marketing materials. The revamped program, however, is much more mature and demonstrates the company’s commitment to working more closely with distributors, VARs, and MSPs, Dunn said.
“Now we’re seeing an almost 180, if you will, transformation of how [Inseego] plans to work on the channel. I would not have considered them channel first, originally, as obviously Mi-Fi and hot spots are through the carriers are a primary focus to their business, and now it seems to be they’re making a much larger investment in the internal [partner] program,” he said.
On the distributor side, the company today is working with the likes of SHI, CDW and ScanSource. Inseego counts ABC News, Delta, ESPN Networks and Siemens as some of its largest connectivity customers.
Supporting Enterprise 5G
The price and complexity of competing cellular routers on the market often “scare away” businesses, especially SMBs and midmarket customers, Johnson said. Revealed on Tuesday alongside the refreshed partner program, the FX 4200 will give these end users a good combination of value and functionality and that partners can sell in large numbers to their clients with a number of locations, or smaller companies with smaller footprints, she added.
“[The FX 4200] really taps into this very strong market for fixed wireless access, which is a nice evolution from wireless WAN for the big enterprises and hot spots for individuals, but there’s an incredibly large number of businesses in SMB to midmarket space that need reliable connectivity [in which] FWA is a perfect solution,” she said.
Partners can then turn management over to their customers’ internal IT staff or offer it as a service, Johnson said.
“We’ve got this great combination of launching a new partner program with a lot of talent behind it, and the right product for those VARs,” she said.