Qualcomm Quintuples Modem Speed
Qualcomm Inc. today is expected to unveil a digital wireless technology that promises to allow users to access the Internet five times faster than today’s speediest dial-up computer modem.
The San Diego-based company, a relative newcomer to the consumer wireless industry, said its new high-data-rate digital technology can transmit data at speeds of 1.5 megabits per second in tests. Standard in-home modems typically offer top speeds of 36.6 or 56 kilobits per second.
Qualcomm said the super-fast wireless connection would offer consumers the ability to buy a wireless phone at an electronics store and immediately tap the Internet at high speeds without setting up special services like cable modems or the phone company’s digital subscriber line systems.
The company spent 18 months developing the new data technology and plans to showcase it at the Personal Communications Showcase, an annual trade show sponsored by the Personal Communications Industry Assn., in Orlando.
“If the wireless companies can make even 65 kilobits per second universally available in the next three years, they will have done something that the phone companies couldn’t do in 20 years with ISDN,” said Bob Egan, research director for wireless at the Gartner Group, a Stamford, Conn.-based research firm. Anyone talking about 1.5 megabits in wireless data speed “is smoking something.”
At the show, Qualcomm plans to use a single wireless phone to simultaneously transmit full-motion video via the Internet, surf sites on the World Wide Web and conduct a conversation over the Internet.
“This may be the best way for consumers to get high-speed access to the Internet,” said Paul Jacobs, president of Qualcomm’s consumer products division. “This kind of thing can be picked up off the shelf at a CompUSA, and activated over the air.”
The company plans to conduct tests in San Diego and in markets where carriers want to participate in the technical trials early next year, Jacobs said. Qualcomm plans to have the technology ready for commercial use by the end of 1999.
First, though, it must convince wireless companies that the technology is sound and economical to add to their networks and to sell to consumers.
Qualcomm’s Jacobs said the new HDR service uses the company’s signature code division multiple access technology as its base, and therefore would be available to carriers who have CDMA networks, including AirTouch, Sprint PCS and GTE Wireless.
New phones would include a special chip and software to add the data access, but the price of the phone would not rise appreciably, Jacobs said. To date, sending or receiving data over a wireless phone has been an exercise undertaken mainly by so-called road warriors--business users with no ready alternative while traveling.
Most wireless phones, if they include data service at all, handle speeds of about 14.4 kilobits per second. Several companies are experimenting with higher speeds, but the faster services also typically require wireless carriers to build special networks to handle the advanced speeds.
Still, mobile phone use is growing, especially now that digital phones offer customers greater clarity, security and advanced features such as voicemail, call forwarding and other services once available only through a wired phone.
