Sequans Communications has announced that the company has worked along with Ericsson to conduct testing of LTE UE Category 1 devices that have a maximum downlink speed of 10 Mbps on Verizon's 4G LTE trial network. The use of LTE CAT1 devices are expected to provide significant reductions in cost, size and power consumption compared to their higher performance counterparts typically found in smartphones and other consumer mobile data devices. These advantages are expected to enable the rapid adoption of LTE technology in the Internet of Things(IoT), including machine-to-machine (M2M) and consumer wearable devices, where high throughput is not a key requirement.
According to Sequans, the trial which took place in the fourth quarter of 2014, has successfully proved the ability of CAT1 devices to co-exist with other higher-performance LTE devices. The company further added that Verizon’s nationwide 4G LTE network provides the extensive coverage needed to support the deployment of these devices for a wide range of IoT use cases.
This work is an exciting addition to our ongoing work with Verizon which included the certification and commercialization of CAT4 chipsets for use in retail devices such as the Verizon Ellipsis Jetpack MHS800L. And now we look forward to helping the Internet of Things flourish on Verizon’s 4G LTE network using our CAT1-optimized solutions.