January 14, 2013
By Jyothi Shanbhag
Franklin Wireless has recently selected Altair Semiconductor’s FourGee LTE chipset to support its line of single mode LTE-enabled products for the U.S. market.
OC Kim, president of Franklin Wireless, said that Altair’s LTE solution was a natural choice for them to integrate into their LTE-enabled devices, not only in the U.S., but in several additional and important worldwide markets.
Altai’s FourGee-3100/6202 is an LTE chipset which supports both FDD and TD-LTE on a single semiconductor and software platform in any 3GPP frequency band between 700 and 2700MHz.
The chipset supports throughputs in excess of 100Mbps/50Mbps DL/UL respectively, and implements a high performance 20MHz MIMO receive architecture and even has undergone extensive and rigorous IOT (Interoperability Testing) with all six tier one infrastructure vendors for both FDD and TD-LTE in more than 12 bands. It is integrated into 30+ products which are either commercially shipping or in field trials / regulatory approvals.
“The level of maturity achieved from successfully deploying across numerous global carrier networks, combined with the performance and low cost offered by Altair’s chipset, will enable Franklin to differentiate our products and shorten our time to market,” OC Kim added.
The FourGee-3100/6202 is suitable for integration in devices such as USB dongles, portable and fixed LTE/Wi-Fi routers, tablets and smartphones.
“We are very pleased to have been selected by a leading mobile and wireless innovator such as Franklin Wireless,” said Eran Eshed, co-founder and VP of Marketing of Altair. “Having Verizon Wireless certified chipsets in its products will accelerate Franklin’s time to market as well as reduce its investment in commercializing their Altair-based products in the U.S. market. We look forward to working closely with Franklin as they expand their differentiated product portfolio into LTE.”
Altair’s chipsets are used in approximately 30 end-user devices – ranging from USB dongles to smartphones – built by its more than 15 customers across North America, Europe, China, India and Taiwan.
Recently, Gigastone opted for Altair Semiconductor’s FourGee LTE chipset to power its LTE-enabled SmartBox product.