ZTEWelink and Altair co-launch LTE Cat.1 module
11 March 2016, Shenzhen, China — ZTEWelink Technology Co., Ltd. (referred to as ZTEWelink), and Altair Semiconductor (referred to as Altair) today announced the co-launch of the long-term evolution (LTE) Cat.1 module ME3610, which is based on Altair’s platform. Thanks to its low power consumption, low rate and cost, the ME3610 helps meet demand for the burgeoning number of IoT connections.
Altair is a semiconductor design company headquartered in Israel with technologies that range from chip design to system solutions. Altair first launched a single-mode LTE chipset, dedicated to the support of Cat.1 with a low cost and power consumption, in the second half of 2015. This new launch sees ZTEWelink partner with Altair to release a new and improved version of the LTE Cat.1 product, the ME3610. The ME3610 supports a download of 10 Mbps and an upload of 5 Mbps of LTE data services and can be widely deployed in IoT application scenarios. For this reason, the ME3610 is expected to disrupt the market.
The ME3610 is in a 30x30mm LCC form factor and it is the newest member of ZTEWelink’s vLink module family. It is pin-to-pin compatible with numerous LTE/wideband code division multiple access/evolution data only (WCDMA/EV-DO) modules which provide users with a flexible choice and design. The ME3610 module gives full play to the advantages of Altair’s module in power saving mode, radio frequency (RF) optimisation and hardware security encryption, bringing superior performance for customers in the IoT industry.
The ME3610 supports four versions of the LTE band including the Chinese version (Band1/3/8), the Japanese and South Korean version (Band1/3/8/19/26), the North American version (Band2/4/12) and the European version (Band3/8/20). It enables customers to quickly deploy the LTE Cat.1 solution in the global market and provides reliable embedded IoT communication for smart metering, point of sale (POS), fleet management and smart agriculture industries, which require a low-power and low cost communication technology.
“We are very excited that ZTE sees the benefits of our FourGee-1160’s low power consumption, superb performance and IoT-targeted feature set,” said Eran Eshed, Co-founder and VP of worldwide sales and marketing for Altair. “ZTE’s ME3610 IoT-optimised module, with Altair’s true CAT-1 chipset inside, is the perfect engine for key applications, such as smart meters, vehicle telematics, security systems and wearables.”
“At present, the mainstream market has shown strong interest in LTE machine-type communication (MTC) products and several major customers have already carried out design-in work on our products,” said Wang Peng, VP of ZTEWelink. “There are more than 480 commercial LTE networks deployed worldwide and most industrial IoT applications do not need super-fast bandwidth. The ME3610, which was co-launched by ZTEWelink and Altair, is more suitable for large-scale MTC applications and we will also research and launch more products to further support LTE MTC technology.”
According to an IDC forecast, the size of the global IoT market will increase from 4.8 trillion US dollars in 2012 to 8.9 trillion US dollars by 2020. At this time, it is estimated that there will be 30 billion devices connected to the Internet. LTE Cat.1/MTC technology with low power consumption and low cost will accelerate the deployment speed of LTE in the IoT industry. According to chief analyst at Machina Research, Godfrey Chua, LTE MTC is expected to account for 10 percent of IoT device connection solutions by 2023.
To keep pace with the IoT era, ZTEWelink will closely cooperate with the upstream and downstream industry chain to bring real value to customers with its all-standard industrial wireless communication modules.
About ZTEWelink
ZTEWelink Technology Co., Ltd., is a subsidiary of ZTE Corporation, dedicated to the development, production and marketing of Wireless Communication Modules, Industry Customized Terminals and M2M Solutions. ZTEWelink’s products and solutions have been widely used in Vehicle-mounted terminals, Smart Power Grids, Remote Controllers, GPS, Wireless POS Machines, Security and Surveillance.
About Altair
Altair Semiconductor is the leading provider of single-mode LTE solutions, playing a pivotal role in realizing the vision of the Internet of Things (IoT). Established in 2005 by former Texas Instruments executives with extensive broadband and wireless silicon experience. Altair’s products are qualified by the world’s leading LTE carriers, and have been adopted by tens of OEM/ODM device makers as their LTE solution to power millions of devices, including tablets, netbooks, Chromebooks, mobile hotspots, USB dongles, routers and M2M applications.
