QUALCOMM'S Jacobs Dismisses Negative Talk About 3G Rollout
Communications Daily
January 27, 2003
SAN DIEGO -- In rare press appearance, Qualcomm Chmn. Irwin Jacobs dismissed any notion that 3G rollout somehow could be characterized as failure, saying: "Although there's been a lot of negative talk about 3rd-generation over the fact that some of it implementation has been delayed... it has been moving ahead fairly rapidly in other areas."
Speaking at Super Technology Bowl event here late Thurs., Jacobs said increased bandwidth with 3G technologies did more than just allow larger application to be downloaded faster. "People have said that there really is no need for really high data rates because there aren't applications," he said. "But one key aspect of the ability to deliver data from one cell site at a high average rate is that you can handle... many more users and therefore provide the service for a much lower cost per megabyte." Bill Blessing, Sprint senior vp-business development & strategy, also cited increased efficiency, saying his company spent less than $1 billion in "card swap-outs at existing bay stations" when it upgraded to 3G CDMA 2000 technology from CDMA last year. "Even as overall packet levels are growing, we're actually seeing the amount of our spectrum required to serve all those new customers reducing... enabling us to serve a lot more customers with existing services," he said.
Increased bandwidth of 3G will be critical in enterprise space and again not just for speedier applications, said Greg Young, senior product mgr.-core products & platforms, at Australian telecom Telstra. Noting that security of network now was huge issue for many companies, Young said: "Encryption and security steal a lot of bandwidth." He said 30-40% of some enterprise wireless data could be taken up by security software.
Super Technology Bowl came day after Qualcomm posted 73% jump in first-quarter profits, largely on strength of sales of chipsets for CDMA cellphones. Jacobs said he expected that momentum to continue through year, noting that Qualcomm now projected it would sell 105-112 million chipsets for CDMA phones in fiscal year, large percentage of which would be CDMA 2000. Among nations and regions where Qualcomm's CDMA technology is showing promising growth are China, where Jacobs projected 20 million users by year-end; India, which formally launches CDMA this year and should have up to 7 million by end of 2003, and Malaysia and Vietnam as well as Brazil.
While there are been some talk that rise of Wi-Fi using 802.11 protocol offered alternative to wide area network data transmission using cellphones, most executives present suggested limited reach of 802.11 networks meant that it was likely to be complementary to cellphone-based wide area wireless networks rather than competition. Jacobs said Qualcomm was looking at adding 802.11B to company chipsets, "but we haven't yet been able to sell the business case." Jeff Belk, Qualcomm's senior mktg. vp, sounded more cautionary note on 802.11, saying city such as San Francisco would need estimated 40,000-60,000 Wi-Fi hot spots to provide adequate coverage.
But if Wi-Fi and CDMA 2000-based wide area networks are to co-exist in enterprise market, Blessing said, "we need some common authentication so the look and feel is the same regardless of how the user accesses the Internet." He said most 802.11-based services were private networks but suggested that eventually they would end up as extensions to CDMA 2000-based services. Young said one solution would be to enable both 802.11 and cellphone-based data delivery to be incorporated in single bill, saying consumers didn't want yet another subscription.
Jacobs also commented on prospects for ultra-wideband, pointing out that in some early tests, it had captured nearby radar signals: "I'm not a strong believer in licensed reuse." -- David Ward |
