Sequans LTE chip wins Chinese approval

LONDON – Sequans Communications SA has announced that its LTE communications chip, the SQN3010, has been approved by China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), a government entity responsible for the regulation and development of China's wireless industry.

The approval will allow infrastructure and handset developers to select the chip for use in China and comes after several months of testing and cooperation with Huawei and Alcatel-Lucent Shanghai Bell.

"We are very pleased to have the MIIT stamp of approval which we believe signals our readiness for worldwide deployment," said Georges Karam, CEO of Sequans, in a statement. He added that Sequans (Paris, France) looks forward to participating in large-scale trials and commercial deployments of China Mobile and other LTE fourth-generation communications systems operators.

The MIIT performance and interoperability testing was conducted in both the 2.3- and 2.6-GHz bands. The chip used in the tests was Sequans' SQN3010 TD-LTE baseband chip. Sequans said that, in addition to Alcatel-Lucent and Huawei, it has completed LTE interoperability testing on a private basis with Ericsson, Nokia Siemens Networks, ZTE and other network vendors.

The approval by MIIT of Sequans' SQN3010 solution follows the chip's recent selection by NetComm, a device maker that recently announced it had been selected to provide TD-LTE devices for a major national LTE network in Australia.


Related links and articles:

Sequans prices IPO to raise $77 million

Sequans, Ericsson in collaboration on LTE

Alcatel-Lucent, Motorola Ventures invest in Sequans

Report: 1.5 million LTE base stations to ship by 2015

MimoOn LTE software ported to TI chips