To keep its products at the leading edge with best in class performance and lowest cost, Sequans Communications has continually invested in R&D. Ever since its founding as a pure play 4G technology company in 2003, Sequans has maintained its leadership position by always looking ahead and around every corner. The company has a strong record in innovation and believes in the value of collaborative research, and has established partnerships with key academic and industry players at every important stage of development.
Early in 2015 Sequans formed a partnership with TCL to accelerate the development of 5G. TCL is a leader in consumer devices design and the collaboration between Sequans and TCL was established to focus on developing the advanced technologies that have already been identified by the 3GPP in its early 5G framing exercises. See the press release here.
However, 5G activity at Sequans started even before the partnership with TCL was established. In December 2013, Sequans joined the 5G-infrastructure association, which was established to represent the private part of the 5G Public-Private Partnership (5G PPP) to drive 5G research in Europe, leveraging the committed 700M of investment by the European Commission. Sequans is one of 30 elected members. Moreover, Sequans is part of two other key 5G projects, Fantastic5G and Flex5Gware, in which Sequans is developing new radio enablers together with industry leaders Ericsson, Huawei, Nokia, Intel, and Orange.
All of this collaborative brainstorming and prep work is leading to 5G becoming reality in the not too distant future. Standardization has begun in 3GPP, and 5G organizations are teaming up to align their visions and strategies. Today, leading 5G organizations including 5G PPP, IMT-2000, 5G Forum, 5G MF, and 5G Americas are coming together at a global 5G event to be held in Beijing, May 31 and June 1: Building the 5G Technology Ecosystem. The purpose of the event is to hear from 5G experts from all over the world about the future of 5G.
Sequans is proud of its work advancing 5G and in the meantime continues to develop and bring to market leading edge 4G solutions such as Monarch, the first Cat M LTE chipset to appear in the market. Monarch is based on the newest Release 13 of the 3GPP standard, defining LTE for machine-type-communications, and featuring the latest in LTE for IoT feature functionality.
