November, 14, 2012 – Hod Hasharon, Israel – Altair Semiconductor, a leading developer of ultra-low power, small footprint and high-performance 4G LTE chipsets, today announced that its FourGee-3100/6202 chipset is now capable of supporting LTE deployments on the 450MHz frequency band. On a single chipset, Altair now natively supports the frequency range of 380-470 MHz in addition to full support of 3GPP Release 9 bands in the range of 700-2700MHz.

Its low frequency and excellent propagation characteristics make the 450MHz band a very attractive and low-CAPEX alternative to the narrowband and less spectrally efficient CDMA450 technology currently in use. Similar to the Digital Dividend band, 450MHz is expected to deliver broadband services to people in remote and rural areas.

“Altair is the first chipset vendor to offer a 450MHz-compliant product," said Eran Eshed, Co-Founder and VP of Marketing at Altair. "We look forward to working with our operator partners and customers to introduce innovative LTE products for tens of millions of consumers in markets such as Latin American and Eastern Europe. Our ability to seamlessly support this frequency band, alongside more mainstream LTE FDD and TDD bands, enables smooth harmonization with the global LTE ecosystem.”

450MHz spectrum has been officially allocated in Brazil, as well as in other Latin American and Eastern European regions, for use in rural areas. Earlier this year, Brazil’s Ministry of Communications signed a statement of commitment with a large infrastructure vendor to develop LTE technology for use in this band. Spectrum holders in the 450MHz band currently include Brazil's four largest mobile operators: Claro (America Movil), Vivo (Telefonica), Telecom Italia Mobile and TNL (Oi).