"We have developed a single chip that includes both CDMA and GSM/GPRS technologies"

Irwin Mark Jacobs

In a wireless world dominated by global system for mobile (GSM) technology, one person has been indefatigable in extolling the virtues of the competing code division multiple access (CDMA) technology around the world.

And after more than 10 years since Irwin Mark Jacobs, chairman of the US-based Qualcomm, began his mission, the world has more than 70 million CDMA mobile users. ICE World caught up with Jacobs during a recent visit to the country. Excerpts:

Is India's telecom policy heading in the right direction?

As we can see from the jump in tele-density which has reached its target more than a year in advance, it is indeed in the right direction.

There have been some significant advantages such as a substantial tariff reduction leading to a very rapid expansion of the user base. In fact, these developments are being followed very closely by many countries elsewhere to see how this works out. But so far, the results we have seen are very encouraging.

Where is mobile technology heading?

We have something of the order of 1.2 billion users of mobile phones today. This number is moving rapidly towards 2 billion. These phones are being upgraded continually. They are very powerful computers, they now have color screens, cameras, GPS receivers and are very powerful devices.

We also see the transition of GSM operators in a new frequency band to WCDMA (wideband CDMA). With CDMA 2000 1X also, we see significant growth around the world. Right now there are probably well over 70 million subscribers on 3rd generation CDMA (almost entirely on CDMA 2000).

But this year we expect to see the numbers coming in on WCDMA to grow. We are expecting 16 million subscribers roughly this year on WCDMA. We can now support up to 2.4 megabits per second peak rates, several 100 kilo bits per second average rates.

So one can provide great capabilities and also at a much lower cost for data. And, therefore, it can support educational, medical and many other different types of applications.

One of the additional advantages of mobile phones is their ability to connect with the internet and support data. We are very interested in helping developers provide additional applications that can be downloaded to phones.

What new initiatives/technology is Qualcomm working on currently?

One of the areas of interest has to do with the support of developers in preparing applications for use on the BREW system that can then be made available to users in different areas, for entertainment, for medical use, for e-governance, for education. Some of these applications can then also be exported, to be used by operators as well as customers in other countries.

We are also in the process of setting up a software development centre in India and have started recruiting employees. At Qualcomm, two of our major businesses are, first, the development of technology and the evolution of technology/new capabilities and, secondly, designing and manufacturing chips for integrated circuits to make them available to the manufactures of phones and infrastructure, along with software for them to be able to bring these developments to the market quickly.

And so one of the areas of activity of the centre will be to write software for the chips and possibly design the chips here in India. Then the application can be downloaded to phones.

There is a tremendous shortage of people who are adequately educated in CDMA. Although, we have our own training courses, we have started efforts with Amity and Macktel to provide training in CDMA here in India.

We are also looking for ways to support universities with our course material that we have developed and lectures that can also train other teachers. We are also looking at providing various resources like scholarships.

We have also set up a venture fund as we do continually look for an opportunity to make investments early in typically small companies to help them move ahead.

With tariffs and profits dipping, how can technology help in increasing profitability?

At Qualcomm, our effort has always been to deliver more value to our customers through innovations in technology which allow operators not only to pack more subscribers into the same chunk of frequency spectrum but also give them capabilities to exploit new avenues of revenue generation there by giving them more headroom with their investments.

The examples are the migration from IS-95 A to 1X to 1x EV-DO, involving only incremental costs.

What's your message to Indian operators, especially those who use GSM technology?

We have developed a single chip integrated circuit that includes both CDMA technology and GSM /GPRS technology. That chip is going to be developed by manufacturers in about 8 months or so. We are working with different manufactures for integrating them into the phones and then doing the proper testing.

The first phone will probably be commercially available next month. I myself believe that because of the very small additional percentage of cost of the chips for providing multimode as well as multi frequency band capability, the entry level phone will perhaps be available in a year or two years from now. GSM operators will continue to use GSM networks, but over-the-air use the CDMA air interface.

China Unicom is very interested in this capability. We have just finished a demonstration with China Unicom on GSM1X and they are working on it. They have built a GSM network and much of China is now on CDMA 2000 networks.

Then the question is: should they continue to grow the GSM network and put data capability on the GSM network through GPRS which is really not too effective ?

Or should they allow the GSM subscriber to continue with a GSM network for voice so they gain from the investments made in it and use CDMA to transmit data? The second approach makes a lot of sense and it gives much better capability to GSM users as well as CDMA users.