Qualcomm's Johnson Talks Two Decades of CDMA

[Karthik R 246]

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Qualcomm has been in business for nearly 25 years, its influence ranging from Verizon Wireless' 3G network to the processor in the HTC EVO 4G, and Peggy Johnson has been there almost from the beginning.

Johnson started at Qualcomm as a software engineer in 1989, and then moved up into roles with the company's handsets, OmniTRACS telematics and Brew operating system. Johnson now serves as executive vice president of the Americas and India, where she is responsible for global development and the adoption of 3G wireless broadband.

Johnson recently spoke about her career, the evolution of the wireless industry and her thoughts on the future of CDMA. Below is an edited transcript of the discussion.

Wireless Week: You joined Qualcomm as a software engineer in 1989, when there were very few incentives for women to join that field. Can you tell me the story of how you got into engineering?

Peggy Johnson: I always liked math and sciences in high school, but not a single person ever pointed me toward engineering. I went to San Diego State University for business, and I thought that was the field I would go into. I had a job on campus delivering mail, and one day I went to deliver mail to the engineering department, and as I was walking down the hall, two of the women assistants there thought I was joining engineering and they got so excited. When I told them I was just there to deliver the mail, they were so disappointed – basically, they worked on me for a half hour and convinced me to go into engineering. I changed my major that week. They showed me that it was an exciting, challenging field, right up my alley, something that I just hadn't heard much about before then. They weren't even professors, they were secretaries. They just couldn't believe a woman was walking down that hallway. I've never looked back. It was a great change and one that was very fulfilling, very gratifying.

WW: You've been with Qualcomm for more than two decades. Why have you stayed with the company for so long?

Johnson: I think what kept me here was that it was always changing, it was always challenging, there was always a problem to solve. At Qualcomm, you're never boxed into a single area. If you had an opinion or an interest in an area, they were always so open minded about it. We've had attorneys who have gone into business development, business development people who've gone back to school to get engineering degrees. It's encouraged and supported to look at other areas, and that's what's kept me here. If I saw an interesting area of the company, I could go over there and work. That makes the job stimulating, very gratifying – you feel like you've solved problems at the end of the day, and that makes you wake up the next morning and want to come back in again and do it all over again.

WW: During your time at Qualcomm, you've seen the company's technology deployed in markets ranging from the United States to India and have worked on projects ranging from Brew to OmniTRACS. What do you consider your top achievements?

Johnson: One that really stands out was my time with Brew. I think a lot of the success that we found with Brew was directly attributed to the team of people I worked with. We ended up deploying Brew across 60 operators globally. Essentially, Brew and our division, Qualcomm Internet Services, built the first app stores. We had this huge micropayments system, so as consumers downloaded apps, developers got paid a revenue share. The money circled back around to developers, consumers would buy new apps, and more apps would be available and consumers would download them. The virtuous cycle that we built there is very similar to what is happening today with the iPhone App Store and the Android Market. It was the basis of app stores as we know them today.

WW: I know you're not involved with Brew now, but could you comment on where you see the platform headed since you were so involved with its inception?

Johnson: The Brew Mobile Platform (BrewMP) has evolved into an operating system for feature phones, which much of the world still uses because of their cost. We have the ability with BrewMP to turn a pretty low-end phone into something that looks and feels like a smartphone. It has the ability to run on lower-end touchscreen displays and can access all types of applications. It's an important area for us because so much of the growth over the next few years is going to be the transition from 2G to 3G in emerging markets. Brew Mobile Platform will play an important spot there. These 3G phones are going to be essentially the first computers many of these people have.

WW: Can you talk about the impact wireless technology has had on previously unconnected communities?

Johnson: When you put a 3G phone in someone's hands in an emerging market, it's just huge, it's life changing, particularly in places like India and parts of Latin America. I've seen it change villages and communities – all of the sudden they have access to healthcare, education, commerce that can help them sell products for a higher price. We have a group here at Qualcomm called Wireless Reach that introduces wireless into underserved communities around the world. The impact of it is just breathtaking.

WW: Qualcomm is not shy about pushing markets ahead and one of those markets has been India. Qualcomm has moved aggressively to push CDMA and LTE in India. Do you feel your efforts have been successful in persuading more Indian operators to adopt CDMA and LTE? Where do you see that market headed in the future?

Johnson: There are four pan-India CDMA operators: Reliance, Tata, MTS and BSNL. They have strong, nationwide CDMA networks that have created good competition and driven handset prices into the $20 level, which means more people can have access. Now they're rolling out 3G. We've just had the 3G auctions in India so we'll start to see that 2G to 3G transition, and then of course the BWA auctions as well, in which Qualcomm participated.

We have not stood still with the technology and have continued to optimize 3G. We've launched 1X Advanced in India, where spectrum remains very limited even after the auctions, to put about three times the voice capacity on a network through software and hardware optimization. As data needs grow, you have the ability to run your 1X Advanced network with voice and use the remainder of your spectrum for either 3G data or LTE.

WW: Obviously, China is a big growth market for Qualcomm and so is India. Looking ahead, which markets do you see as major growth drivers for Qualcomm?

Johnson: Certainly India and China, but Latin America as well. By 2012, 65 percent of the phones shipping in to Latin America will be 3G. Much of Latin America doesn't have access to broadband data like we do here, whether it's DSL, cable or wireless. In Latin America, there are big geographic areas that will never have wired broadband access, so there's a pent-up demand for broadband access we believe will be fed by wireless.

WW: As we move from 3G to 4G, how much growth is left in CDMA?

Johnson: It goes back to the continued optimizations that we can do on CDMA. 4G won't be everywhere on day one. You need to have the backbone of 3G in place for suburbs, the rural areas. It will take time for LTE to be ubiquitous in the way that 3G networks are today. You want to have a device that's multimode that can fall back to 3G. That's where a multimode solution like we have here at Qualcomm is really the right way to address that.

WW: Qualcomm has a lot of technology initiatives outside of CDMA. Where do you see the company headed over the next decade as LTE networks come to the fore?

Johnson: I think we'll obviously continue to work hard in the area of merging the modem and the processor, and we have our Snapdragon line of chips. As devices become more computer-intensive, you're going to need more power in the processor, so we'll continue to focus a lot of our research and development efforts in that area. Processors need to be able to handle a lot of video, they need to be able to handle multitasking appropriately, they need to be able to handle power. The other area that feeds into that is the screen itself, which is the biggest driver of power on the handset. Our efforts with Mirasol, our display technology, are going to become more and more important. We believe the user is going to expect that whatever you can do on your desktop, you can do wirelessly. We need to keep up with that demand.

Source : Wirelessweek