Qualcomm pulled out of the network equipment market in 1999 and outside its CDMA space, it has few activities in infrastructure chips (except in femtocells/Wi-Fi). But it retains an interest in promoting RAN technologies which could boost smartphone usage and therefore help its core device silicon and patents businesses. To this end, it has sometimes acquired spectrum in order to kickstart a favoured technology ‘ 450MHz in Europe for low frequency CDMA; 700MHz in the US for MediaFLO; Indian BWA licences for TD-LTE; L-band in the UK for carrier aggregation.
These adventures have had mixed results, and Qualcomm is usually quick to sell on the spectrum or networks once they have fulfilled their initial purpose of establishing a specific platform. The latest example is carrier aggregation, and particularly supplemental downlink (SDL) ‘ systems which allow a carrier to augment its LTE capacity by harnessing a separate piece of spectrum, in the case of SDL an unpaired one. The latter technique is being used by AT&T for the unpaired 700MHz frequencies it acquired from Qualcomm after the end of the MediaFLO escapade and may become widely adopted elsewhere to turn niche spectrum bands to 4G use. France Telecom recently got permission to trial SDL in the L-band mobile satellite band, as a potential addition to its main FD-LTE networks in 2.6GHz and 800MHz.
Qualcomm hopes to have a direct revenue stream from this trend, via chips and patents, and also that SDL will help boost the overall demand for high end devices. CEO Paul Jacobs said on the quarterly earnings call that Europe’s CEPT (European Conference of Postal and Telecommunications Administrations) had recently made an initial decision to harmonize L-band spectrum for supplemental downlinks. “This is the same spectrum that we own in the UK. This is an important milestone and opens up the potential to have our carrier aggregation technology deployed widely across Europe,” he commented.