Sierra Wireless
More info
- Released
- 1993–2023
- Owner
- Semtech (since 2023)
- Type
- Cellular modems and IoT modules
Canadian company that put mobile data into laptops long before phones could share theirs.
Sierra Wireless was founded in 1993 in Richmond, just outside Vancouver. Its AirCard modems, slotted into a laptop's PC Card bay, were the standard way for business travellers to get online without Wi-Fi in the early 2000s — slow, ruinously priced per megabyte, and still a revelation.
As cellular modems moved inside laptops and then into phones, Sierra pivoted to embedded modules: 3G and LTE radios in cars, payment terminals, smart meters and anything else that needed to talk to a mobile network with nobody holding it. In 2023 it was bought by Semtech, which wanted to pair the modules with its own LoRa technology.