Companies partner to focus on commercial WiMAX deployment in China

picoChip today announced that it has signed a development partnership agreement with WTI-BUPT (Wireless Technology Innovation Institute, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications), one of the most prestigious wireless research institutions in China. WTI-BUPT will use picoChip’s industry-leading WiMAX reference designs and PC102 processor within its research programmes, and the two organisations will work together to develop commercial WiMAX systems optimised for the special needs of the Chinese market. WTI-BUPT will also be investigating TD-SCDMA implementations for 3G based on picoChip technologies.

Professor Zhang Ping, Director of WTI-BUPT, said, "We are working with many Chinese manufacturers to develop WiMAX and other wireless systems. The flexibility, performance and cost-effectiveness of the picoChip offering are very attractive. Combining their WiMAX reference design with our system expertise and advanced research programmes will allow us to deliver very sophisticated and advanced systems to Chinese manufacturers."

In Beijing for the partnership signing, Guillaume d’Eyssautier, President and CEO of picoChip, added, "We are committed to the Chinese market, and are delighted to be working with a world-renowned institution like WTI-BUPT. With this relationship, and our other partners here, we feel that picoChip’s technology and WiMAX experience can significant assist the needs of manufacturers and operators in China."

picoChip recently announced it has raised a $20.5 million third round funding. New lead investor Scottish Equity Partners is joined by Rothschild and Intel Capital, along with previous investors Pond Venture Partners and Atlas Venture. picoChip technology is being used by Intel and Airspan in their WiMAX basestation designs. Airspan has won WiMAX contracts from Marconi and Fujitsu. Fujitsu is a supplier of access equipment for BT’s 21st Century Network (21CN) project.

China is one of the world’s most important wireless markets and picoChip continues to increase its commitment and focus on the region by working closely with strong local partners and government entities. The company has a fully equipped development laboratory in Shenzhen supporting local engineering activities, announced at the UK-China ICT Forum last September. In January 2005, at the Wireless Broadband session of the UK-China High Technology Industry Forum in Beijing, picoChip signed a cooperation agreement with the Institute of Computing Technology (ICT) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) to collaborate on the acceleration of WiMAX in China.

picoChip provides solutions to the key challenges of cost, development time and flexibility for next generation of wireless systems. The company’s processor, the PC102, delivers world-beating price / performance and has achieved design wins with numerous major companies developing wireless infrastructure. Uniquely, the company also delivers complete, standard compliant reference designs for UMTS (including HSDPA) and WiMAX (16d upgradeable to 16e for mobility). The PC102 is ideally suited to TD-SCDMA.