O2's LTE Friendly User Trial to Feature AVM FRITZ!Box Powered by Altair Semiconductor Chipsets

HOD HASHARON, Israel, Dec. 20, 2010 /PRNewswire/ -- Altair Semiconductor (www.altair-semi.com), the world's leading developer of ultra-low power, small footprint and high performance 4G LTE chipsets,  announced today that its chipsets will power the AVM FRITZ!Box LTE being used during O2's upcoming digital dividend and 2.6GHz friendly user trials in Germany, scheduled to begin immediately.  

O2's digital dividend (Band 20, 800MHz) and 2.6 GHz (Band 7) trial will allow residents of rural areas in Germany with O2 coverage to receive an LTE WiFi FRITZ!Box router from AVM and receive free service from O2 for six months.

Digital Dividend is UHF spectrum that, until now, has been used for analog television broadcasting. As greater numbers of consumers switch from analog to digital televisions, this spectrum has become available for use in carrying mobile broadband signals. 2.6GHz (Band 7) is the primary spectrum used for urban deployments.

"As one of the largest manufacturers of DSL Integrated Access Devices (IAD) in Europe, we wanted to be sure to work with a company able to effectively support the rigorous demands of this LTE trial," said Dr. Gerd Thiedemann, Head of Product Management at AVM. "Altair's FourGee-3100/6200 chipset, operating at digital dividend 800 Mhz and 2.6GHz,  allowed AVM to integrate LTE, Wireless LAN and voice into one powerful device, the FRITZ!Box LTE."

Beyond the Digital Dividend and 2.6GHz spectrum bands, Altair's multi-band capabilities allow the devices it powers to seamlessly operate in every LTE frequency band allotted in Europe, an advantage that will become increasingly more important as European countries begin rolling out numerous LTE products over the coming year.

Altair's FourGee-3100/6200 is a 3GPP LTE chipset that supports LTE throughputs of 100Mbps/50Mbps DL/UL respectively and supports both FDD and TDD variants using a single software, and covers any LTE frequency band in the range between 700-2700MHz.

"We are very proud to partner with AVM on this project and to further demonstrate the maturity and performance of our market-ready chipsets," said Eran Eshed, Co-Founder and VP of Marketing and Business Development at Altair Semiconductor "We look forward to broadening our partnership with AVM and to rolling out our solutions in a number of their products over the coming months."  

About AVM

Founded in 1986 in Berlin, AVM is one of the top two manufacturers of DSL devices in Europe. With a market share of over 50 percent, it is the leading manufacturer in Germany, Europe's largest market. The Berlin-based communications specialist has received numerous awards for its innovative FRITZ!Box product range, developed and produced in Germany. FRITZ!Box enables fast, user-friendly Internet access, easy networking, convenient telephony and versatile multimedia applications. AVM has 425 employees and generated a turnover of euro 200 million in fiscal 2009. For more information, please visit the company's website at www.avm.de.

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