Wireless future road-blocked by backhaul

Qualcomm co-founder Dr. Irwin Jacobs and current CEO and Chairman Paul Jacobs took the CTIA IT & Entertainment Keynote stage to reflect on where wireless has been and what it will take to achieve the future of wireless ubiquity that they are imagining. In the wireless future that the Jacobses are envisioning, new uses for wireless present the most exciting opportunities. Dr. Jacobs said e-readers and using technology in the classroom, two initiatives Qualcomm is currently working on, are most compelling to him. To his son, wireless power and the ability to charge multiple electronic devices by placing them on a platter will be an important opportunity. Qualcomm is also working on cyber-signs that send deals to the mobile phone when a consumer passes through, essentially turning the phone into a digital sixth sense, he said. The phone will be a remote control for things in the physical world, but also will be the most direct, personal way to access information about consumers. There will be formidable challenges on the path to achieving this vision, both agreed. Most pressing is wireless operators need for more headroom on backhaul. Dr. Jacobs said that Qualcomm has done all it can do with spectral efficiency and is now exploring other architectures and tricks to further stretch existing spectrum. He noted that the industry has gotten where it is from reusing spectrum and will have to continue to expand available spectrum through backhaul, devices like femtocells that offload services and reusing what spectrum is already available. "We are getting to the point where in the labs we've done what we know how to do to optimize the spectrum," the younger Jacobs said. "We have to do new tricks now." He anticipates an eight to 10 times improvement in user experience if operators build their own networks, but this will take backhaul and the move to LTE to make it work.