D.C.-based venture firm Core Capital Partners has invested $10 million in a company devoted to increasing the capacity of mobile phone networks.

BridgeWave Communications, a Santa Clara, Calif.-based startup firm, has technology that solves the problem of adding capacity to a network when data is being transferred to cellular phones, according to Pascal Luck, managing director at Core Capital.

“As the mobile carriers upgrade to high speed networks, you can get video on cell phones and do all these other things, but you use more data,” Luck said. “And the growth of data usage over cell phones is vastly outstripping that of voice.”

BridgeWave uses a form of wireless technology so that more fiber isn’t needed to boost the network, which is important because of the high cost of fiber, Luck explained.

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BridgeWave plans to use the additional investment for sales and marketing to grow the business.

Core Capital has previously invested in a number of mobile companies, such as LimeLife and Trust Digital.

So many mobile technologies are coming together that mobile phones are almost becoming akin to laptops in terms of the bandwidth used for applications such as GPS, advanced search, music transfers and video downloads, according to Joel Evans of Geek.com

“The everything device that we never thought we needed is pretty much here … we just have to figure out how much we’re going to pay a month for it,” Evans said.

melissa.frederick@dcexaminer.com