Telit to acquire Thales' cellular IoT business

 Telit agreed to acquire Thales' cellular IoT products division, which offers a portfolio of cellular wireless communication modules, gateways, and data (modem) cards, ranging from 4G LTE, LPWAN to 5G. 

Thales' cellular IoT module business, with approximately 550 employees across 23 countries, services many of the world's top brands. It generated sales of more than €300 million in 2021.

The combined company will be called Telit-Cinterion and based in California. To sharpen focus on Industrial IoT, Telit Cinterion plans to spin off and manage separately the automotive IoT unit after closing.

Paolo Dal Pino, Telit's CEO, remarked: "Innovation, scale and efficient IoT solutions are key for success. This transaction with Thales is arguably the most impactful one for Telit competitiveness. While it will boost our ability to address customer needs more precisely from a richer portfolio, it will also enable us to deliver all new offerings derived from the experience, expertise, and the DNA of two companies that have made security and quality part of their brand promise from the very beginning."

Philippe Vallée, Thales's EVP Digital Identity and Security, added: "The Thales and Telit combination brings together complementary strengths. The business will provide a unique value proposition in a highly competitive global IoT market and will allow Thales to focus its investments on its three core activities in aerospace, defence and security and digital identity and security. The new combination will rely on a unique set of expertise brought by Thales and Telit employees. It will also benefit from leveraging both companies' strong and complementary product portfolio and Thales's experience in cellular connectivity."

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Telit lauches mPCIe module for CBRS

Telit released a new version of its PCI Express Mini Card (mPCIe) family supporting Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS).

Telit said its new CBRS-specific module will help accelerate the deployment of IoT devices on private LTE CBRS networks. The new cost-optimized module is specified for full industrial temperature range, making it is ideal for high data rate applications, including industrial gateways, enterprise routers and CPEs, high resolution video cameras and bandwidth intensive industrial sensors like infrared, x-ray and ultrasound imagers. It can operate in the CBRS band 48 for the U.S. market and in band 42 and 43 for international markets. The LM960A family of modules also offers a 5G evolution path to Telit's FN980m 5G Sub-6GHz and mmWave data card, enabling original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) to quickly develop next-generation solutions for the CBRS market, which ABI Research predicts will be worth $16.3 billion by 2025.

The company claims its LM960A family of data cards remains the only 1Gbps-class LTE Advanced Category 18 mPCIe module in the industry, and the world's first mobile broadband card to support CBRS band 48 (3.55 GHz). Powered by the Qualcomm® Snapdragon™ X20 LTE modem, the LM960A18 rivals wired broadband technologies, with up to 1.2 Gbps download  and 150 Mbps upload speeds This makes the LM960 ideal for bandwidth-intensive CBRS applications such as enterprise routers and gateways, HD and 4K video, and software-defined wide-area networks (SD-WAN). It is also the only product fully certified on major mobile network operators in North America as well as others worldwide.

"CBRS and private LTE networks are changing the way enterprises wirelessly connect their sites and campuses. With Telit's enterprise-grade technologies and experience, they are among the leaders in the industry, helping system integrators and OEMs get their OnGo certified products to market faster," said Alan Ewing, Executive Director, CBRS Alliance. "We look forward to Telit's continued work in advancing this exciting market."

"The LM960A9-P and our membership in the CBRS Alliance highlight Telit's commitment to providing OEMs and their customers with industry-first private LTE solutions," said Safi Khan, Regional Product Marketing Director, Telit. "The new, CBRS-only version, LM960A9-P provides LTE Advanced high performance today and previews what OEMs and customers can expect from our forthcoming 5G mobile broadband devices for CBRS applications."

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