Altair Semiconductor Announces Commercial Availability of Digital Dividend (Band 20) Reference Design

HOD HASHARON, Israel, Sept. 14 /PRNewswire/ -- Altair Semiconductor (www.altair-semi.com), the world's leading developer of ultra-low power, small footprint and high performance 4G LTE chipsets, today announced the commercial availability of its Digital Dividend (Band 20) reference design, one of the world's first such designs and the only one that has already completed rigorous IOT testing with tier-one infrastructure vendors.

Altair's Digital Dividend reference design features the company's proven FourGee LTE chipset and interoperability-tested software stack.  It can be used in a wide range of products, including USB dongles, CPEs and routers, all of which are expected to be market-ready by the end of 2010.

"As greater numbers of countries around the world begin to license Digital Dividend spectrum for mobile broadband use, the demand for mature and market-proven products suited for this spectrum is going to rapidly increase," said Eran Eshed, Co-Founder and VP of Marketing and Business Development at Altair Semiconductor. "As the only Digital Dividend reference design that has been extensively IOT-tested, Altair is providing vendors with a solution that will allow them to quickly introduce innovative and high performance commercial products that meet the needs of consumers, while taking advantage of the inherent benefits of the Digital Dividend spectrum."

Due to excellent propagation characteristics, Digital Dividend spectrum will become especially important for use in rural-broadband installations. Additionally, according to the GSMA, it is approximately 70% cheaper to provide mobile broadband coverage over a given geographic area using Digital Dividend spectrum than with the 2100MHz spectrum widely used for 3G services today.  

Digital Dividend is UHF spectrum that, until now, has been used for analog television broadcasting. As a greater number of consumers switch from analog to digital televisions, this spectrum has become available for use in carrying mobile broadband signals.

The UK, France, Germany, Sweden and Finland have already licensed using Digital Dividend spectrum for mobile broadband use. Additionally, leading German carriers Vodafone and Telefonica O2 are already testing LTE in Digital Dividend spectrums and plan to launch commercially before the end of the year, while Deutsche Telekom recently announced that it has started signing up customers for its LTE rural broadband service, replacing existing DSL infrastructure with LTE solutions that run over Digital Dividend spectrum.  

About Altair Semiconductor

Altair Semiconductor is the world's leading developer of ultra-low power, small footprint and high performance 4G semiconductors. The company's products provide device manufacturers integrating 4G LTE technology into their products with a highly power-optimized, robust and cost-effective solution. Altair's comprehensive product portfolio includes baseband processors, multi-band RF transceivers for both FDD and TDD bands, and a range of reference hardware and product level protocol stack software. Based on a novel, proprietary Software Defined Radio (SDR) processor, codenamed "O2P™", Altair's products are the smallest and most highly power optimized in the industry, offering an unmatched combination of flexibility and performance. For more information, visit the company's website at www.altair-semi.com.  Follow Altair on Twitter: @AltairSemi

SOURCE Altair Semiconductor