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Qualcomm signs OFDM deal with WiMAX developer
[May 02, 2006]

Qualcomm signs OFDM deal with WiMAX developer


(Total Telecom Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)It may spend some of its time haranguing the mobile WiMAX community, but wireless technology company Qualcomm also seems more than happy to license its patents to a company that specialises in the development of fixed and mobile WiMAX network equipment.



Qualcomm has signed its first global OFDM/OFDMA subscriber and infrastructure licence agreement with SOMA Networks to enable the U.S.-based equipment company to use Qualcomm's patent portfolio in its WiMAX technology.

OFDM forms the basis of wireless broadband technologies such as WiMAX, WiFi, and of course Flash-OFDM, the technology acquired by Qualcomm when it bought Flarion Technologies last year.


Flash-OFDM and the mobile variant of WiMAX are seen as competing technologies as they both seek to provide alternative wireless broadband solutions for service providers. These technologies are also likely to have a partly competitive, partly complementary relationship with cellular mobile technologies such as HSDPA/WCDMA and cdma2000. Qualcomm has said it plans to integrate the Flarion technology with its existing OFDMA portfolio, which it will offer alongside its traditional business based on CDMA.

Under its deal with Qualcomm, SOMA will be able to use the OFDM/OFDMA IPR as the basis for its WiMAX technology. But Qualcomm has not been backwards in making its feelings known about the likely business case for mobile WiMAX. Indeed the company's head of marketing, Jeff Belk, wrote an entire white paper on the matter, calling on the WiMAX industry to provide fact, not fiction.

And this is not the only time that Qualcomm has seemed to denounce a technology on one hand and then support it on the other. The company recently said it would support the development of chipsets for the DVB-H mobile TV standard, even though at the same time it is trying to push its competing MediFLO technology into the market, claiming it is a better solution than DVB-H.

Fundamentally, of course, Qualcomm's main business is to license its technology to other companies and to increase its patent pot to enable it to keep pace with new developments in the market. But it seems that while it will license its patents to, say, a WiMAX developer, it doesn't have to like their choice of technology.

"We're entitled to have an opinion," commented Andrew Gilbert, Qualcomm's new European president and a former Flarion executive.

But he said Qualcomm would be criticised more if it did not license its technology to those that asked for it, whatever its views are about a particular technology.

"Qualcomm licenses companies under FRAND (fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory) terms and believes that competition is a key catalyst for technological innovation and growth," Gilbert added.

He stressed that Qualcomm's "No. 1 business priority remains driving 3G CDMA (cdma2000/EV-DO and WCDMA/HSDPA). However, Qualcomm understands that operators will make their technology choices for numerous reasons and is committed to supporting all of its partners, regardless of their technology choice, including those choosing only OFDM/OFDMA."

While Gilbert said Qualcomm believes there is a good business case for fixed WiMAX as a backhaul solution, it thinks that mobile WiMAX "will need significant investment in resources and time to become genuinely useful for mobile applications."

He added: "Qualcomm anticipates that 3G broadband data (EV-DO Rev B, HSDPA Release 6) and well-designed mobile OFDMA systems based on 802.20, may very well be available sooner than WiMAX and provide the required capabilities."

SOMA, meanwhile, launched its FlexMAX Wireless Platform based on the IEEE 802.16e mobile WiMAX standard at the CTIA Wireless event in Las Vegas in April.

Commenting on the Qualcomm deal in an emailed response to Total Telecom, Greg Caltabiano, president of SOMA Networks, said: "IPR is an important pre-requisite in order for carriers of any size to deploy infrastructure. We take our technology leads from carriers and they want their IPR to be safe."

"This move is a real-world pragmatic checkpoint that the industry must achieve to de-risk IPR issues for global deployments," Caltabiano added. "From SOMA's perspective, it is an important part of offering carriers a complete end-to-end BWA/WiMAX solution."

SOMA said it will be one of the first vendors to complete WiMAX Forum certification testing upon final ratification of the 802.16e-2005 testing process by the WiMAX Forum.

It added that it will offer FlexMAX products in both FDD and TDD versions, covering the full range of licensed frequency bands for both current and expected future profiles, namely: 700 MHz, 1.7/2.1 GHz, 2.3-2.7 GHz and 3.3-3.8 GHz bands.

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