Telit Communications (LON:TEL) is taking advantage of the vacuum left by Kyocera’s abrupt exit from the M2M module business to establish a foothold in the CDMA telematics markets. This week, Telit announced that its first CDMA product, a dual-band 1X module, has been approved for Sprint’s 2.5G network.
The Italian machine-to-machine module maker has always focused on the GSM/UMTS embedded devices markets, while Kyocera (NYSE:KYO) has focused on CDMA. In March, though Kyocera shocked the industry by closing the division down outright.
“Although there had been some rumblings in the industry for a few months that something big was in the works with Kyocera, the news that Kyocera Wireless Modules would be shuttered, rather than sold off or made independent, came as a something of a surprise,” ABI M2M connectivity analyst Sam Lucero wrote in a research note in May.
So far Sprint (NYSE:S) is the only CDMA provider to approve a Telit product, but a Telit spokesman indicated that the deal is only the first step in a larger CDMA expansion greatly extending its scope in the US and North America. Telit’s GSM modules are certified for the AT&T (NYSE:T), T-Mobile (NYSE:DT), and Rogers Wireless (NYSE:RCI) networks and they are being used as GSM solutions on two of the largest M2M network resellers Kore Telematics and Jasper Wireless. But without a CDMA product more than half of the region’s networks were formerly out of Telit’s reach.
The new module, the CC864-Dual, is part of the same family as its GSM and UMTS modules, sporting the same form factor and interfaces, thus allowing a Telit customer to easily swap out a GSM module for a new CDMA one. While the CDMA module doesn’t yet support EV-DO, Telit said the 3G technology is on its road map, given the increasing demand for higher-capacity M2M applications.
