“In India, huge volume deployment will happen in the second half of 2013”
India is the second largest market for TDLTE in the world. How is Sequans looking at this market?
With respect to TD-LTE, China is delaying their deployment whereas Indian operators will start their deployment in 2012. In India, we are heavily involved with all the vendors and operators both on enodeb and IOT (inter operator testing). Our strategy is to bring multiple devices so that the early market for TD-LTE can be captured by nomadics using CPE, dongle, and hotspot.
In India, huge volume deployments will happen in the second half of 2013, where we can see large additions in the market. We are targeting both fixed and mobile broadband. In India, CPE will play a major role followed by tablets with embedded LTE modem.
How are things progressing with respect to the TD-LTE ecosystem?
The eco-system wrt TD-LTE is getting pretty much stable. The enodeb vendors have done their IOT testing and they have also shown performance throughput, sensitivity and user experience for different operators. We are providing technical support to all enodeb vendors and operators, and will continue to do so.
What are your India plans? Do you plan to set up your R&D facility in the country?
We have R&D centers in France, UK, Israel, and Ukraine. We do not have a development facility in India and we have no plans as of now. We are willing to expand our India operations in terms of business development, revenue generation, and support infrastructure. In terms of chip development or application development we are satisfied with whatever facility we have worldwide.
When do we see TD-LTE CPE devices available in large numbers for the Indian consumer?
Today dongles or CPES are available in small numbers. Hotspots would be available in Q2, 2012 and smartphone/tablet in H2, 2012. The chipsets for all these would be available in Q12012, as presently chip manufacturers are doing sampling based on 40 nm technology.
Who are the Sequans partners focusing on the India market?
We have close to 7-8 partners worldwide— Netcom, Gemtek and Telenet. Telenet Systems, an Indian player and Gemtek, a Taiwanese player is focusing on the India market and is designing consumer devices for the India market. The company has also signed up with two more ODM partners and would announce their names in a couple of months.
Who are your competitors in the TD-LTE chipset market and where do they stand with respect to the release of chips for CPE devices?
Chip manufacturers who are focusing on TD-LTE are Qualcomm, Altair, Intel Mobile Communications, St-ericsson, and Marvel. All of them are working on the same timeframe and they all will be ready by 2012. We are expecting Release 10 to be ready by early 2013.
pravinp@cybermedia.co.in