In the news
Feb 27, 2014

Altair Touts Single Mode LTE Success, Will Focus on IoT

TMCnet

By Rich Tehrani

Single mode LTE is has gone from evangelism mode to commercial shipments according to Altair Semiconductor as they showed me the new Verizon seven-inch Android Ellipsis Tablet which retails for $249 with no contract and only $10/month as part of your shared plan. This is the first LTE-only product according to Brendan Schaffer who tells me that by using a single-mode device you can save up to $100.

Another product, the HP 11.6 Inch Chromebook is also an LTE-only device and it costs $249 with no contract or activation or $199 with activation and no contract or $149 with a 2-year contract. You can pick this device up at Best Buy according to Schaffer who says the product really maximizes cloud-based computing, extending it beyond WiFi.

This is big news for the company – you may recall how last year I reported about how they were evangelizing the single-mode LTE concept and was discussing network certifications.

Having passed this major milestone of enabling multiple devices in the US, the IoT is now a ripe area for the company where they think they will be able to lower costs over mulitimode solutions.

I mentioned that in many of my conversations with carriers they say they love the M2M space because it leverages their low-bandwidth legacy networks. He pointed out that from a network-longevity standpoint, 4G makes sense – citing AT&T shutting down their 2G network in 2017. Another area where 4G is logical of course is high-bandwidth M2M applications such as remote video monitoring/surveillance.

Expect to hear more from the company about disruptive price points in the IoT space. That is where Altair Semiconductor sees lots of opportunity.