Wifi Revolution

With the global WiMAX market expected to reach $2.2 billion by 2008 (according to research by Gartner), Paris, France-based WiMAX chip supplier Sequans is sitting pretty, particularly in terms of bringing its solutions to the European market.

The company, which boasts being the only WiMAX chipmaker to have received certification for both base station and subscriber station reference designs for fixed WiMAX from the WiMAX Forum, announced today that it has received $24 million in venture capital from Kennet Venture Partners, a leading international private equity firm that provides growth equity to technology businesses in Europe and the United States.

According to company CEO Georges Karam, Sequans will use the funding to expand its sales and customer support, as well to accelerate the introduction of high performance, low-power integrated chips supporting both mobile and fixed applications.

Sequans’ existing investors, including Add Partners, Cap Decisif, T-Source, SG Asset Management and Vision Capital, also participated in the financing round.

Sequans’ newest reference designs, based on its mobile WiMAX chips that are currently sampling, are to be certified in the first wave of WiMAX Forum mobile certifications planned for later this year.

“Sequans has done an extraordinary job bringing to market solutions for fixed and mobile WiMAX in a short-time frame and with very efficient use of capital,” Michael Elias, managing director of Kennet Venture Partner, said in a statement. “Now with significant capital on its balance sheet, we believe Sequans is extremely well-positioned to achieve leadership in the WiMAX market.”

Sequans was founded in 2003 by Karam and a team of engineers who previously worked together at a broadband wireless technology company. The company made news last month when it announced that it is now trialing its WiMAX mobile solutions with select customers.

Sequans’ chipsets support the recently ratified 802.16e-2005 broadband wireless access standard. They provide equipment makers with a fully integrated physical layer and media access control (MAC) layer solution and offer super low power consumption.

“The results of our tests so far exceed our expectations and we are now confident in releasing the mobile station chip to our key customers and ODM partners,” said Bertrand Debray, Sequans VP of engineering, in a press release. “The team executed brilliantly in developing a high performance chip in record time.”

Sequans’ SQN1110 SoC is a highly integrated, 802.16e-compliant, baseband solution. Its high level of integration and low power consumption make it suitable for use in handsets, smartphones, PDAs, PC cards, USB devices—as well as fixed devices.

Sequans’ new mobile station chip was designed to include all MAC and PHY features required to attain WiMAX certification, which is expected later this year.

The company is also reportedly trialing its SQN1110 mobile station chips along with evaluation kits for the SQN2110 base station chipsets; both of which are expected to be available in September 2006.

For more information, visit www.sequans.com.

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Patrick Barnard is Associate Editor for TMCnet and a columnist covering the telecom industry. To see more of his articles, please visit Patrick Barnard’s columnist page.

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