While device makers are pushing to deliver download speeds of 150 megabits per second, chipmaker Sequans is promising speeds twice that fast through carrier aggregation. Carrier aggregation is the combination of spectrum from different bands, and Sequans today introduced an LTE-Advanced modem that the company says can aggregate more spectrum than anything else on the market.
Sequans CEO Georges Karam said his company’s LTE-A modem enables the “combination of any two carriers of any size up to 20 megahertz each, contiguous or non-contiguous, inter-band or intra-band, for an overall total of 40 megahertz of bandwidth.” He said the chipset will be sampling next quarter.
“There are two kinds of carriers [that will benefit],” Karam told RCR Wireless News. “If they have not much spectrum, they can bundle their bandwidth with [that of] another small carrier. … We are able to take any two carriers and bundle them. We can do [5×5], [15×5], any combination up to [20×20].”
While aggregation of different carriers’ holdings can create a whole worth more than the sum of the parts, the technology is also very interesting to larger operators because they often have spectrum holdings in different band classes. “You can have China Mobile or Verizon or Sprint/Clearwire with a lot of bandwidth. They could be bundling [20×20] and offer big throughput,” said Karam. “This could take [download speeds] up to 300 Mbps, while today the max is 150 Mbps.”
Sequans joins Qualcomm and newcomer Nvidia in the LTE modem space. Broadcom also announced an LTE modem this month, expected to debut in phones next year. These modems must be tested by each carrier with each device on each band class, so while carrier aggregation definitely adds functionality it also adds testing time. But once new LTE modems are actually shipping in smartphones, analysts expect the competition to drive down prices for these components, and that in turn could mean LTE phone prices.
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