Telit, a global enabler of the Internet-of-Things (IoT), this week announced a cooperation with Altair Semiconductor, a leading provider of LTE chipsets to introduce ultra-small LTE devices for the M2M and IoT industry. The new LTE modems are needed for numerous applications, including wearable devices, smart homes and smart metering, fleet management, point-of-sales and health monitoring among others.
With the partnership, Telit has introduced the LE866 module, the first in a new series based on Altair chipsets designed to support LTE Category 1 enhancements for Machine-Type Communications (MTC). The LE866 will be first released commercially for the U.S. market, with additional regional variants to follow.
Telit claims that the LE866 is currently the smallest LTE module in the market. The LGA footprint is a mere 15 x 25 mm. It’s a UE Category 1 device with maximum data rate of 10 Mbps downlink and 5 Mbps uplink. The module employs Altair’s FourGee-1160/6401 IoT-optimized chipset that provides extremely low power consumption, which results in a significant increase in battery life, while reducing cost/complexity compared to traditional high-performance LTE devices.
The LE866 is software upgradable to support the power-saving mode (PSM) that 3GPP has specified for MTC in Release 12. Release 13 of the 3GPP LTE standard, which is foreseen for March 2016, will bring further improvements on power consumption, cost/complexity and coverage for IoT and M2M applications.
Felix Marchal, Chief Product Officer, Telit
The decision to partner with Altair was an easy one to take. We expect LTE low-category devices to catalyze billions of dollars in spending by the M2M and IoT industry, and Altair is a leading vendor in this space.
Eran Eshed, Co-Founder and VP of Marketing and Business Development at Altair
Not all CAT-1 chips are created equal. The great market potential for CAT-1 draws many players to try to compete. However, most are simply rebranded higher-category chipsets that are functionally compatible with CAT-1, but fall short on power consumption and die size. Our close cooperation with market leader Telit brings the first truly IoT-optimized module to the market, unlocking new use cases and expanding the IoT market.
