Icera to open LTE R&D center in France

In an official statement, French Industry Minister Christian Estrosi claimed that Icera will hire a minimum of 50 engineers over the next three years to work on the next generation of mobile telecommunications.

Estrosi noted that this investment, that follows Intel's decision to invest in R&D in Toulouse, France, and to open a design center in wireless technologies in Sophia Antipolis, "proves France's attractiveness in high technologies."

He specified that Icera, thanks to the French research tax credit, was able to accelerate its R&D investments and will continue to benefit from the local SCS (Secured Communicating Solutions) competitiveness cluster. In addition, the company's investment will reinforce Sophia Antipolis' ecosystem in key competencies such as ICs, embedded software and mobile telecommunications.

In April 2008, Icera (Bristol, UK) raised a further $40 million in equity funding. The round was led by Tudor Investment Corp. (Boston, Mass.) and Icera's existing investors Accel Partners, Atlas Venture, Amadeus Capital Partners, Balderton Capital (previously Benchmark Capital Europe) and 3i Group plc.

Two months later, Team Côte d'Azur, a joint initiative of the Alpes-Maritimes county council and the French Riviera Chamber of Commerce and Industry, announced that Icera had closed a financing round over $100 million. At the time of the announcement, Icera said that its Sophia Antipolis site employed about 95 people and was due to double in size over the next two years.

Icera opened its first facility in Sophia Antipolis in January 2005 and created an additional 1200m engineering facility in 2006 to focus on 3G and 2G layer 1 protocol development, system integration, validation and certification for next generation mobile phones and devices.

Icera has a global presence with offices in France, the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Japan, Taiwan and in China.