Alcatel-Lucent and Altair enable TD-LTE solutions for emerging markets

Mobile World Congress, BARCELONA, SPAIN: Altair Semiconductor, the world's leading developer of ultra-low power, small footprint and high performance 4G LTE chipsets, announced that their TD-LTE solution, combining Altair's 4G LTE chipsets and Alcatel-Lucent's LTE infrastructure, has successfully completed interoperability (IOT) testing and will take part in several TD-LTE field trials in India and China, scheduled to start in the coming weeks.

The solution offers carriers the most mature and cost effective TD-LTE solution available in the market today.

"Altair's TD-LTE solution is a highly mature and cost optimized TDD terminal chipset platform, providing a perfect complement for our infrastructure systems and best positioning us to capitalize on the expected growth of the TD-LTE industry," said Doug Wolff, VP, LTE End to End Solutions of Alcatel-Lucent.

"Having successfully completed IOT testing with Altair, we are now ready to begin demonstrating the full capabilities of the market's most advanced TD-LTE solution to customers around the world, beginning with the TD-LTE field trials in India and China."

TD-LTE, a 4G wireless standard which was designed to operate in unpaired spectrum, is emerging as the de-facto 4G standard for TDD spectrum globally. Since China Mobile's selection of TD-LTE as its 4G upgrade path, TD-LTE has received strong support from leading carriers around the world.

"TD-LTE, specifically in emerging markets, represents the highest growth potential for LTE in the coming years, and is a strategic focus area for Altair," said Eran Eshed, co-founder and VP of Marketing and Business Development at Altair. "After more than a year of close collaboration with Alcatel-Lucent on commercializing our respective TD-LTE products, we feel confident in our ability to meet the performance and maturity expectations of our carrier customers, with a solution that also meets the aggressive price targets of carriers in these markets."