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Sequans has extensive global experience with utilities and advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) companies, and is enhancing its influence in Canada through membership in Canada’s first 1.8 GHz private LTE (pLTE) utility ecosystem. The consortium, recently announced by Electricity Canada, the national forum of Canadian Electric Utilities, and Ubiik, a leading provider of pLTE systems, was established to support utility networks operating at the 1.8 GHz frequency. Other consortium members include advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) vendors and semiconductor companies. The members have all committed themselves to supporting next generation utility networks in Canada through ensuring that Electricity Canada’s 30 MHz of spectrum in the 1.8 GHz private LTE band is fully leveraged to the benefit of the entire ecosystem.

Canadian Electric Utilities have the sole right to use the 1.8 GHz band for private networks in Canada. The frequency can support ultra reliability, security, and low latency as needed for the advanced utility applications, including distribution automation, remote monitoring of smart meters, and predictive maintenance, that utilities need to modernize their networks.

For its part, Sequans is dedicated to ensuring its customers have optimized and competitive solutions to address the Canadian market while maintaining failover to public mobile networks. Sequans is enabling support of the 1.8 GHz frequency on its Monarch 2 LTE-M/NB-IoT chip platform, expanding further its global deployment capability, and is working with partners Ubiik and Itron, to demonstrate how operating on this frequency can benefit Canadian electric utilities and their customers. Sequans Monarch 2, already deployed in millions of smart meters worldwide, is one of the industry’s leading LTE-M/NB-IoT connectivity solutions, and it can support advanced services in both private and public networks.

Sequans Monarch 2 customers can benefit from a fully flexible platform that can support Canadian, US, European, and Asia-Pacific utilities, with a unique SKU. This gives them not only a differentiated offering, but also allows them to benefit from economies of scale. Itron recently selected Sequans Monarch 2 for its smart meters deployed in Queensland, Australia, partly because of these significant benefits.

Behind the scenes, the 3GPP has just approved the integration of the 1.8 GHz band within the scope of 3GPP Release 19 for LTE-M and NB-IoT and Sequans has been leading in this effort by supporting the 1.8 GHz band in Monarch 2. The entire 1.8 GHz ecosystem now has an official standard to support their deployments in Canada.

Supporting next generation utility networks has long been a key objective of Sequans and its membership in the new private LTE consortium in Canada will have a positive effect on the modernization of the electrical grid in Canada. Developing products for 1.8 GHz will enable Canadian utilities to rollout networks that can support not only smart meters and AMI equipment, but also electric vehicles, battery storage, and other new edge applications, ultimately creating new and more valuable services for Canadian energy consumers while advancing the entire grid.