Hod HaSharon, Israel –June 29, 2011 – Altair Semiconductor (www.altair-semi.com), the world's leading developer of ultra-low power, small footprint and high performance LTE chipsets, announced today that it has opened a new office in India to be headed by industry veteran Salaj Sinha. The new facility will handle all Indian operations and provide business and technical support for prospective and current customers.

Altair offers one of the only commercially ready TD-LTE chipsets, and is the only cost-effective single mode TD-LTE solution available in the market, that can ship in volume in 2011. India is the third market, following China and Japan, where Altair has established a TD-LTE leadership position.

“We believe that India will be one of the largest and strongest growth markets for LTE and an on-the-ground presence in India will allow Altair to enhance support for our Indian customers, as well as enable us to effectively support the large scale field trials we are involved in, as we progress towards the commercialization of TD-LTE in India," said Eran Eshed, Co-Founder and VP of Marketing and Business Development at Altair. “In contrast to FD-LTE where several chip vendors offer commercial products, Altair is the only chip supplier today with a cost effective and power efficient TD-LTE product, capable of fulfilling the stringent requirements of markets like India."

Increasing Altair’s presence in India is an important strategic move for the company, as the region has emerged as the world’s fastest-growing telecommunications market. Indian carriers poised to launch LTE services include Reliance Industries, Bharti Airtel, Aircell and Tikona, among others.

"Within a few years, India will become the world's number one LTE market in terms of installations and commercial applications and Altair's local presence, plus our field-proven and commercially ready product line, will further solidify Altair’s TD-LTE leadership position in India," said Salaj Sinha. "I am excited about joining the great team at Altair and I look forward to working together with the company's management and R&D teams to drive our success in India."

Salaj has a long and successful track record of leading the development of various telecom products, including Wimax USB Datacard, 3G/EVDO USB Datacard, PON Terminals, ADSL2+ Modem/router/IAD, IP-DSLAM, MPLS Network Routers, CDMA/GSM FWP and Optical Fiber, for several leading telecom companies. He most recently served at the Chief Technology Officer at Teracom Ltd., one of India's fastest growing telecom companies.

Recently, Altair successfully demonstrated real-life over-the-air simultaneous throughputs of 58Mbps down and 14Mbps up, becoming the first chip vendor to achieve such high performance on a commercial TD-LTE USB dongle.

In addition to the new India facility, Altair has established regional offices in the United States, Japan, China and Germany, and has representatives in Korea and Taiwan.