Broadcom shows off new Cat 6 LTE multimode modem

Broadcom has made significant strides on LTE, especially after it acquired LTE-related assets from affiliates of Renesas in September. Broadcom’s M320 dual-core LTE System-on-a-Chip will be shipping in at least one Samsung phone in the first quarter, though the companies aren’t releasing details. The chip supports LTE Cat 4, with speeds of up to 150 Mbps.

Last year at CES we took a look at Broadcom’s LTE modem portfolio, where the company showed off a Cat 4 LTE baseband doing 10+10 MHz carrier aggregation, before being formally announced at MWC. Since then a number of things have changed, including Broadcom’s acquisition of LTE and SoC related Renesas Electronics assets, and subsequent restructuring of Broadcom’s LTE modem plans. Its own LTE modem which we saw last year has been shelved in favor of a plan forwards with an M320 SoC with multimode capabilities and an upcoming standalone LTE modem.