Perhaps, transition from 3G to 4G will be faster in India: Sandeep Sibal

Interview with country manager & vice-president, business development, India & South Asia, Qualcomm

While Airtel has launched fourth generation (4G) service in multiple cities in the country and a few other operators, including Reliance Jio and Vodafone, are looking to launch it by the end of this year. For Qualcomm, which provides the key processors for smartphones and also technologies to enable operators use their spectrum efficiently, it throws up opportunities. Sandeep Sibal, country manager and vice-president of business development for India & South Asia, Qualcomm, tells Bibhu Ranjan Mishra how the company is looking at bringing technologies such as carrier aggregation and Long-Term Evolution (LTE) broadcast to India with the rolling out of the 4G/LTE service. Excerpts:

Your view about smartphone adoption in India?

The right kind of word to describe what has happened in the smartphone segment is probably revolution. The way it's happening, perhaps at some point in time, one won't need the laptop. Lots of the most recent compelling applications and services are being designed for smartphones first. The number of smartphones being sold is far more than laptops, and not only that, the amount of time the younger generation spend on smartphones is far more. With the roll-out of third-generation (3G) networks and now Long-Term Evolution, or LTE (a standard for fourth generation, or 4G, networks), it would allow you to access content and application at the kind of speed that the consumer would find pleasant.

Don't you think the market in India may be little bit premature to embrace 4G/LTE technology?

If you remember, when 3G was launched, there were a lot of talks on whether we really need 3G when we have second generation (2G) and GPRS. Now, after going through the experience, people don't ask that question any more. In my view, the transition from 3G to 4G/LTE is actually going to be much more seamless and perhaps faster, a primary reason being you no more need to transition from feature phones to smartphones as happened when we moved from 2G to 3G. The 4G device has the same user interface and there is a little difference in rates. In fact, in China, the switch from 3G to 4G/LTE smartphones was very quick.

What role Qualcomm is playing in making the devices more intelligent?

We are now extending smartphone technologies into what people are calling the Internet of Everything. Here, we are embedding our processors inside all kinds of things and bringing them online and allowing them to talk to each other, talk to the cloud, or talk to smartphones. On the automotive front, we recently had a few announcements with some leading automakers, where we are embedding our technologies and processors not just for navigation, etc., but for connecting to multimedia systems and wireless charging. We are also exploring the concept of smart homes with smart lighting systems and connected air conditioners that connect to smartphones or the cloud. This is creating interesting value propositions for the users, as well as the vendors.

With the rolling out of 4G, what are the other opportunities in the service providers' space?

There are a couple of interesting developments in the 4G space. A key one is carrier aggregation. One of the challenges we have had in India is that spectrum has been scarce. Operators have got spectrum in smaller chunks and across different bands. The idea is to aggregate and use these bandwidths across the bands to create a larger virtual pipe that allows higher speeds, greater capacity, and better spectrum utilisation.

Qualcomm is a world leader in 3G and 4G/LTE technologies and carrier aggregation is one of the innovative technologies we have deployed to support operators across the world. Similarly, we also expect to see features such as LTE broadcast, which allows you to optimally utilise the spectrum by sending one video stream to multiple users instead of sending multiple streams.

And this perhaps makes sense for the carriers since they have bought spectrum at a much higher rate this time; right?

Yes, it is absolutely right. The issue is that because spectrum is so limited and so precious, technologies that can help you use the spectrum more efficiently or increase capacity and speed, are very important. Several operators are exploring Carrier Aggregation. And it's just not true only for India, we are seeing this globally, across all countries. There are 138 countries in the world where LTE has been rolled out.

How do you see the adoption of 4G enabled devices that is going to happen in India?

If you look at the January-March quarter of 2015, the number of 4G devices sold in India more than doubled. According to CMR, more than 2.2 million LTE devices were shipped during the quarter. And we have over 50 LTE devices that showed up in this market. We expect to see this trend continue in the coming quarters too with more OEMs introducing more 4G LTE devices, in parallel with the launch of additional 4G LTE networks.

How is India, as a market, growing for you?

We see India as a vibrant 3G market with 4G LTE smartphones beginning to gain traction. It's one of the fastest growing regions for us. India is the 3rd largest market after China and the US in terms of smartphone sales. But in terms of growth rate, we are ahead of both China and the US.