Wireless Utopia

This tuesday I attened a seminar on the Evolution of 3G technologies by Qualcomm University in Delhi. The event was the annual Globalcomm Exibhition. It was a three day exibhition in Delhi's Pragati Maidan, attended by large and small companies in the Indian Telecom Sector.



What was amazing was the presence of Qualcomm there. They were one of the sponsors and took up some premium real estate in the hall. Large banners were visible all throughout and they were even hosting a seminar along side the main event.



The seminar was a well attended event. Tata Indicom, Reliance and BSNL are the three major players in the CDMA field in India. And Qualcomm had invited all of them for ditching out some marketing propaganda.

The seminar started off with a session on 1xEVDO. A marketing guy started off with a introduction and then the technical guy took over. They tried to explain EVDO Rev 0 and Rev A in about an hour or so and I thought they did a pretty decent job.



The afternoon session was about UMTS Rel 99 and HSDPA. Since this was my first session on these ones, its was pretty informative. Seems that QC has quite a good presence in those two technologies as well if you take in the similarities between 3G 1X and UMTS Rel 99. Even HSDPA takes quite a few concepts from EVDO, especially the single TDM forward traffic channel.


Thier stall had the whole product line on display. The CSM's, the MSM's, BREW etc. It was nice to see the MSM's one on one. They are our counterparts actually. We talk to them, manage them, handle all thier mischeifs and try to serve them as best as possible. They are our overlords in a way!

But the overwhelming expericnce was the display of QC's clout. They were trying to woo the service providers and going by the attendence of senior officials, I guess that they have been very sucessful in that. QC has been the been the dirving force behind EVDO and has a significant contribution to HSDPA and HSUPA. These three technologies form the backbone of 3G services.

And with thier recent acquisition of Flarion Technologies, they have a large patent base on OFDM as well. OFDM is a key technology for 4G telecom services and QC already has plans to introduce it in DO and UMTS roadmap. Being a major player in both the erstwhile CDMA and GSM camp, QC has slowly transformed itself into a giant in the telecom world.

No wonder they have a halo around them.