Inventel was a French company developing consumer electronics and communication systems, noted for domestic gateways and considered one of the primary architects of Triple play in Europe. Founded in 1990 in

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...

Jacques Lewiner Jacques Lewiner (born in 1943) is a French physicist and inventor. He is Professor and Honorary Scientific Director of École supérieure de physique et de chimie industrielles de la ville de Paris (ESPCI Paris), and (since 2012) dean of innova ...

and Eric Carreel, the company was acquired by

Thomson SA Vantiva SA (formerly Technicolor SA, Thomson SARL, Thomson SA, and Thomson Multimedia) is a French multinational corporation that provides technology products and services for the communication, media and entertainment industries. Headquarter ...

in 2005.

History

Inventel was founded in 1990 by two researchers from ESPCI ParisTech,

and Eric Carreel, who later co-founded Withings. The company was successful at commercializing scientific research, and providing full product development (software, electronics, and mechanical) in-house. In the 90’s Inventel succeeded in the

pagers A pager, also known as a beeper or bleeper, is a wireless telecommunications device that receives and displays alphanumeric or voice messages. One-way pagers can only receive messages, while response pagers and two-way pagers can also acknow ...

market with Tam Tam: a paging service using the ERMES standard, which was marketed by large operators. In 1997, Inventel began its engineering activities in

DECT Digital Enhanced Cordless Telecommunications (DECT) is a cordless telephony standard maintained by ETSI. It originated in Europe, where it is the common standard, replacing earlier standards, such as CT1 and CT2. Since the DECT-2020 standard ...

. Since then, many Inventel features for DECT phones have been distributed by the major European operators. By 1999, Inventel was working on a device integrating wired and wireless voice and data. The BlueDSL was released in 2001. In 2001, Inventel accepted a €6 million investment from Banexi Ventures and Innovacom. Inventel became the first major manufacturer of

ADSL Asymmetric digital subscriber line (ADSL) is a type of digital subscriber line (DSL) technology, a data communications technology that enables faster data transmission over Copper wire, copper telephone lines than a conventional voiceband modem ...

wireless secured access, with the DWB200 released in 2002. Further ADSL modems for wireless hotspots and the consumer electronics market were developed, including the Livebox gateway which was distributed by France Telecom and several other European operators. In March 2005, Thomson announced the acquisition of Inventel.The Times
Based in the 5th arrondissement of Paris near the École supérieure de physique et de chimie industrielles de la ville de Paris, the company had around 75 employees when it was acquired by Thomson.

References

{{Reflist Electronics companies of France