Altair Semiconductor Develops LTE Chipset for the Indian Market

Altair Semiconductor, one of the leading developers of power-saving 4G LTE chipsets, just announced that it has launched a low-cost feature-rich chipset specifically catering to the Indian TD-LTE market. India is expected, over the next few years, to become one of the fastest growing LTE markets on the planet.

Altair's chipset, known as "Hornet," comes from a long day's work at the lab and in collaboration with major Indian carriers. Its birth came from the demand on the Indian wireless market for a low-cost yet high-performance phone.

Co-Founder Eran Eshed, also VP of marketing and business development at Altair, said, "The combination of the explosive growth expected in India's broadband market, together with the challenging cost requirements to enable this growth, is very unique compared to other global markets. We believe we are spot on with this new and optimized chipset in terms of defining the precise set of features at the right cost point to enable mass adoption of LTE, connecting millions of people to the Internet."

At this moment in India, carriers like Bharti Airtel in Kolkata and Reliance Infotel have dominance over the 4G LTE market. Reliance Infotel has the strongest influence, as it currently covers the entire nation. India is starting to dive quickly into the 4G LTE stratosphere and, hopefully, Altair Semiconductor's effort will help make that dive more accelerated.

Altair represents one of the biggest parts of the global TD-LTE industry, making products that appear in Brazil and producing trials aggressively with carriers situated around the planet, such as Softbank in Japan and China Mobile. Its TD-LTE solution has successfully been demoed with Category 4 throughput in the Asian market.

Salaj Sinha, GM of marketing and sales for Altair India, said, "We have made great progress since entering the Indian market. We will soon start shipping commercial volume into the local market, and expect the 'Hornet' chipset to further differentiate our offering and help stimulate the ecosystem."