Sequans

History

Sequans Communications was founded in October 2003 by Georges Karam. He had previously worked at Alcatel-Lucent, SAGEM, and Philips before helping found Pacific Broadband Communications in 2000. He joined Juniper Networks in 2001 when the company acquired Pacific Broadband Communications and served as Juniper Network's Vice President of Engineering and General Manager for Europe until leaving the firm to found Sequans.

In 2006, Sequans raised $24 million in venture capital in a funding round that was led by Kennet Venture Partners. It closed another funding round led by Reliance Venture that was joined by Alcatel-Lucent, Motorola, SAGEM, and others in 2007.

Sequans was originally focused on the WiMAX chipset market and had more than seven WiMAX chips on the market by 2008. It expanded to the LTE market in 2009. Sequans was listed by the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol SQNS in April 2011. A few months later, in September, the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology approved Sequans' LTE technology for use in the country. The company released its first LTE chipset to market in 2012.

One of Sequans' SteamrichLTE chips was certified by Verizon Wireless for use in devices on its LTE network in January 2013. In February, Sequans was ranked the third overall LTE Baseband Supplier by ABI Researchand the company released its EZLinkLTE modules in May of that year. The EZLinkLTE modules, one of the first to support LTE bands 4 and 13, were built on the Sequans Mont Blanc chip that was previously certified by Verizon. In October 2013, two of the company's EZLinkLTE modules were certified by Verizon Wireless for use in tablets and mobile computers that run on Verizon's LTE network.

In January 2014, Sequans was one of two LTE chipmakers to provide technology to Verizon for its LTE Multicast demonstration at the 2014 Super Bowl.That same month Sequans' EZLinkLTE module was selected by KD Interactive to provide LTE connectivity to its Kurio 7 4G LTE Android tablet. In April, China Telecom announced that its LTE-only modems would include Sequans' single-mode TD-LTE CPE units. The company's EZlinkLTE module was selected for Best Buy's first LTE Insignia tablet in November 2014.

In February 2016, the company partnered with Verizon to enhance LTE Cat-M development and announced the Monarch chip, a Cat-M1 and Cat-NB1 3GPP LTE Release 13 Advanced Pro compliant platform. Sequans Calliope Cat-1 LTE chipset was certified for use on NTT DoCoMo's network in March 2016. The same chipset was certified by Verizon to support its Voice-over-LTE applications in April 2016. In May 2016, the European Aviation Network selected the Sequans' LTE chipset to provide European aircraft with onboard internet access to passengers. That same month, the company's EZLink LTE module was certified for use on AT&T's 4G LTE network.

In September 2016, Sequans demonstrated their Monarch LTE Cat M1/NB1 chip at the CTIA's trade show in Las Vegas. Link Labs announced that it would use Sequans Monarch chipsets in its modules for cellular networks in October 2016. In November 2016, Verizon conducted the first over-the-air data call using a Sequans Cat-M1 chip in a prototype. That same month, Gemalto partnered with Sequans to produce a Cat-M1 IoT solution, and the company's Monarch chipset was used by NimbeLink in its Cat-M1 embedded cellular modem. In January 2017, Gemalto debuted the EMS31 LTE Cat M1 module baed on Sequans Monarch chip and NimbeLink, LinkLabs, and Encore Networks announced that their LTE CAT M1 devices based on Sequans' Monarch chips were certified by Verizon Wireless.