Qualcomm's UK spectrum is too big for pocket TV

• Tags:
• 3G,
• Wi-Fi,
• Mesh,
• HSDPA

Rupert Goodwins ZDNet.co.uk

Published: 20 May 2008 16:15 BST

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...in the environment we can expect in 2012. That means thinking big. But how big?

The next decade will see 3G/HSDPA offering a lot of services very cheaply, and the joy of IP is that you can create new services over existing infrastructure very easily. This will be even more true in that time span; by then, handhelds of all types will be easier to develop for and deploy to. Whatever Qualcomm comes up with, it will have to be strong where the 3G world is weak. It can't afford to be another WiMax, unable to find a strong differentiator to set it apart from the competition.

The weakest link in 3G is operators — big, fat concerns, hugely dependent on ripping the punters off by charging stratospheric overheads for simple services. A text message costs an operator nothing to carry, yet costs users four times more per byte than Nasa spends talking to Hubble. The operators' biggest worry is that it is hard to see how to carry margins like that across to the way consumers want to use mobile data — grabbing and interacting with internet content — and that, more than any technical concern, limits what 3G will be doing in 2012.

All of this makes the most interesting problem one of bypassing the operators altogether. That means creating a big, open market where infrastructure is cheap, bandwidth plentiful, and producing and using devices is as easy as it is with Wi-Fi gadgets (WiMax was going to fill this role, once upon a time). And there, the biggest problems are base stations and backhaul. How do you roll out a nationwide service without thousands of base stations and gigabits of backhaul distributed expensively to all of them?

Mesh. You may remember mesh from the initial excitement around it or, more recently, from its role in the dysfunctional soap opera of the One Laptop per Child project. But it's still out there.

Wide-area mesh doesn't work well with Wi-Fi: the frequency is too high, the power too low, the band too congested. You need somewhere where you can use more power, where there's no interference, where you get more reach and more freedom in setting the protocols. Something like an unfettered 40MHz on L-band would be almost perfect.

It is a huge leap of imagination to see a successful end-user mesh network, where one consumer has to be within radio range of another to get connected. Getting to critical mass will need the creation of something that looks remarkably like an operator, to provide a skeleton on which the flesh of the mesh can grow, even if the business model is very different — think of it as being more like a discounted handset, where the initial operator infrastructure is provided free, in expectation of revenues to come.

But there is much to recommend it: unlike existing configurations, adding more nodes to a mesh actually increases throughput for everyone and, if your business model involves selling as many chips as possible, then this is a very interesting model indeed. Unlike existing 3G systems, your economics get better the more users attach and consume data. They're doing the work for you. It's not a model you can explore in an ordinary lab: you have to get stuff out there to have a chance of working through the many issues.

All these factors don't add up to a compelling case for Qualcomm using the UK as a mesh testbed. The company has a huge investment in making MediaFLO work, and it's dangerous to underestimate the internal pressures such factors bring to bear in quashing diverse thinking within an organisation. It's not clear that the company has the right intellectual property to capitalise on such a system and, if it doesn't, whether it could develop it. Yet it makes more sense than creating yet another MediaFLO demonstration system or yet another "me-too" wireless data service. It would be a very big win indeed.

Whatever happens, I envy Qualcomm. In its UK L-band segment, it has a blank canvas on which to paint a completely new picture. The industry's expecting Vettriano; let's hold out for Picasso.

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