Anne-Francoise Pele EE Times (11/19/2009 5:34 AM EST)

PARIS — French WiMax chip supplier Sequans Communications SA (La Défense, France) announced that Alcatel-Lucent and Motorola Ventures, the investment arm of Motorola, led a round of financing to foster the company's Long Term Evolution (LTE) development program. Financial details remained undisclosed.

Sequans Communications has recently expressed its intention to develop LTE and WiMAX semiconductor solutions in parallel. With this new round of financing, the French company said it intends to accelerate its LTE development timeline and to add resources to its LTE teams.

Sequans Communications said it expects to demonstrate its first LTE samples in early 2010 in support of pre-commercial operator trials.

"Our expansion into LTE has been part of our long term strategy for about two years and is a natural progression for us," commented Georges Karam, CEO of Sequans Communications.

He continued: "Our long experience with operators and OEMs combined with the tremendous base of knowledge we've accumulated over the last five years developing WiMAX silicon, puts us in an excellent position to deliver industry-leading semiconductor solutions for LTE as we have done for WiMAX. We are grateful for the backing of Alcatel-Lucent and Motorola and look forward to a close collaboration in bringing powerful new 4G technology to reality."

This is not the time Alcatel-Lucent has expressed interest in Sequans Communications. In February 2007, telecom equipment provider Alcatel-Lucent made a strategic but undisclosed investment in Sequans. This investment was an extension to the $24 million Sequans raised in third round funding in 2006 that brought total venture capital backed funding to $32 million.

In February 2008, Sequans also raised $28 million in a fourth round of equity-based and convertible debt financing.

Sequans Communications specified that existing investors also participated in this round of financing.