Tag: Willcom

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There Goes Advanced PHS (XGP)

As previously reported, Israeli Startup Altair Semiconductors was supposed to Supply chips to Willcom’s XGP network .

XGP was never a world-wide standard, but Willcom’s attempt to keep PHS alive. It now looks like XGP (or Advanced PHS) will not be deployed.

Willcom announced today their plan to file for bankruptcy  (See Japan Times and NYT for more details) after a steady decline of their customer base.

I don’t know what kind of commitments Altair Semi received from Willcom, but I certainly hope their WiMAX and LTE business will be more successful.

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Altair Semiconductors announce LTE baseband

altair_logo

Israeli Startup Altair Semiconductors announced today the availability of their LTE baseband processor. Named FourGee-3100, this is the first in a series of LTE portfolio.

This is Altair’s 3rd chip following the FourGee-2150 for Mobile wiMAX and FourGee-4150 for XGP. I don’t believe the FourGee-2150 is widely deployed nor gained siginificant design wins, but as reported earlier, the FourGee-4150 XGP powers Japanese Willcom new XGP network .

Altair announced their plans for:

  • FourGee(TM)-6150 – a MIMO RF transceiver that supports LTE-TDD. This product will be available in August 2009
  • FourGee(TM)-6200 – a multi-band LTE-FDD MIMO transceiver that supports the most popular LTE bands in North America, Japan and Europe. The chip will be available in Q210

LTE-FDD will arrive in Q2, 2010, long after trials are expected to start in Japan. Will Altair gain enough market share with the LTE-TDD? We shall soon find out.