Next Generation Communications (by TMCnet)
By Michael Guta
Telecommunications companies have been bidding billions of dollars in the past several years to acquire the right spectrum in order to deliver their services more efficiently. The latest bid for the available H block was awarded to Dish Network by paying $1.56 billion. Even though the spectrum is not as valuable as the high-powered LTE (News – Alert) networks, it nonetheless shows the interest companies have whenever any spectrum is available so they can find ways to monetize it and provide new services. A new router developed by Wistron NeWeb (News – Alert) Corporation (WNC), designer and manufacturer of advanced wireless communication products, and powered by Altair Semiconductor’s FourGee-3100/6300 single-mode LTE chipset will use the wide 3.5 GHz spectrum footprint to offer LTE broadband Internet access.
With this router communities that don’t have the infrastructure to provide cable, DSL or fiber optic broadband service will now be able to enjoy high-speed Internet connectivity over the 3.5 GHz LTE bands.
This indoor Wi-Fi/LTE router is powered by Altair’s FourGee-3100/6300 single-mode LTE chipset, making it one of the first devices to operate on bands 42 and 43 in the 3.5GHz LTE spectrum.
“The 3.5GHz spectrum represents a high growth area for fixed broadband LTE products in the coming years, and is very strategic to WNC. We selected Altair Semiconductor (News – Alert), one of the only providers of 3.5GHz solutions for commercial products, due to the outstanding performance and maturity of its LTE chipset and software,” said Johnson Hsu, VP of Digital Home Business Unit at WNC.
The spectrum is available around the world and has been allocated in Europe and under standardization in Japan, but also in developing markets in Africa, Asia Pacific and China, and Latin America. What this means especially for developing countries with limited infrastructure is, they will now be able to provide consumers in their respective countries access to reliable broadband technology without the capital expenditure of wired infrastructures systems.
The 3.5 GHz band defines 200MHz of contiguous TDD spectrum, which allows it to deploy higher number of LTE channels than any other band.
Altair Semiconductor specializes in developing single mode LTE chipsets, making it the leading developer inthe world of high-performance LTE solutions. The chipsets it produces are used by more than 30 original design manufacturers globally to connect more than 80 end user products including fixed routers and modems, M2 M applications, netbooks, portable hotspots, tablets, and USB dongles.
“There is a lot of available spectrum in the 3.5GHz band. Following the demise of WiMAX (News – Alert) and other proprietary technologies, LTE has become the most viable candidate for deployment in this band. We are proud to have partnered with WNC to develop this market leading 3.5GHz product and look forward to expanding our joint portfolio to other device categories in the future,” said Eran Eshed, Co-Founder and VP of Marketing and Business Development at Altair.