Mobile connectivity is one of the core areas of Qualcomm, the leading multinational in the development of communications chips. At the head of this division of the company is its vice president and general director, Javier del Prado, from Barcelona, a graduate in Telecommunications Engineering at the UPC and a master's degree in telecommunications networks from the School of Telecommunications Engineering at New York University. . Del Prado has dozens of registered patents.
What is a Barcelonan like you doing in Silicon Valley?
I have been working in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth for 23 years and I wanted to work for the leading company in this technology, which was Qualcomm, so I decided to come here, because I love working on something that improves people's lives.
How is that?
I usually get home late because I work long hours. When my children ask me why I like my job so much I tell them: “The console you have, the phone, all the devices you are using, have the Qualcomm Wi-Fi chip and you can use it thanks to the work your father does.”
His management area at Qualcomm, mobile connectivity, is one of the sectors with the greatest future projection. What is the current position of the company on the global scene?
Qualcomm is the market leader. In the last ten years we have sold more than 7.5 billion Wi-Fi units. A large majority are for mobile phones, but we also have access points on the market such as routers, automotive and internet of things. We were the first to develop Wi-Fi 7. We announced it a little over a year ago and we already have more than 350 designs on the market, of which more than 190 are on mobile phones, tablets or computers.
What problems exist today with the Wi-Fi that we have right now in most homes?
The applications that people use at home increasingly require greater bandwidth and lower latency. In online video game applications, streaming, virtual reality, augmented reality... At the rate that demand is growing, today's technology will not be able to maintain the quality of service for these apps.
What solution does the industry propose?
What we do with Wi-Fi 6 and, above all, with Wi-Fi 7 is to develop technology to be able to give the user the quality of service they need and guarantee an immersive experience.
We lack speed and in homes we connect more and more devices to Wi-Fi. What does Wi-Fi 7 technically solve compared to the previous generation?
It's true. At home there are more and more wireless applications. We have dozens of devices that connect with Bluetooth or Wi-Fi. Two of the most important improvements of Wi-Fi 7 are that it offers double the bandwidth and, most importantly, that it has the ability to add two channels simultaneously to guarantee quality of service. At Qualcomm, especially our Wi-Fi 7 solutions are capable of adding two channels in 5 Ghz or 6 Ghz, while most of those devices we have at home use the same 2.4 Ghz band.
That's where the jam occurs...
The congestion due to low capacity in that band is very great. With Wi-Fi 7 we move all the data traffic that requires low latency to the high bands. By supporting two channels, we can guarantee that if one is congested, we use the other. We have measured that latency using Wi-Fi 7 is six times lower than what we measured in the previous generation.
The problem now is that the user not only needs to renew devices, but also the home Wi-Fi router, which is mostly the one provided by the internet operator and which usually has a long renewal cycle.
The vast majority of phones that have been launched with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 platform already use Wi-Fi 7. There are more than 15 phones on the market and we expect that number to increase dramatically next year. Regarding the Wi-Fi router, there are already designs in the retail market that use Wi-Fi 7. The big step is that operators are already starting to work on Wi-Fi 7. We have announced collaborations with them and we hope that these designs will be in the market soon.
There will be a progressive replacement of home equipment, but will this replacement last several years?
Now the Wi-Fi cycle is about four years. We have already started working on Wi-Fi 8.
Is there a difference between the European and US markets regarding Wi-Fi?
It is a global market. Our clients are global, such as Samsung, Xiaomi or Sony. All of them sell in both Europe and the United States. I see no difference either in terms of the penetration of technology in Europe or in the United States.
Is Bluetooth LE (low energy), which can locate objects such as keys and suitcases, a future sector that is too incipient, with little reach to the public?
We have been working on Bluetooth LE for several years, which is in phones and allows the development of specific applications. At the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, in four months, I will be able to tell you about the innovations we will have in Bluetooth, with location of accessories and other technologies. I hope to see you in Barcelona and I will explain what we have prepared.
During the pandemic we suffered a serious global chip production crisis. Has the world already regained the ability to manufacture and distribute them?
The pandemic created huge demand for chips, especially Wi-Fi. For the customer, Wi-Fi is the fourth or fifth essential need. People at home need water, electricity, gas, telephone and Wi-Fi. That need put the production and logistics system under great stress and we have seen that there were shortages in the last two years, although now we see that we are back to normal. Now there are no longer any shortages in the supply chain.
We have been promoting 5G in telephony for a few years. Do we already know what the next generation, 6G, will be like?
There is still a runway for 5G in innovation. The Wi-Fi cycle is four years, but in telephony it is longer. Of course we are already working. Qualcomm has always been the leader in different generations. It is a little early to talk about what 6G will offer and we will have to wait a while to know exactly.
What emerging technologies would you say will have the greatest impact in terms of mobile connectivity in the next decade?
I would like to comment on what I see from a bluetooth and wifi connectivity point of view. In the future we see that the phone will be at the center of the experience, but it will be increasingly connected to other devices, to your watch, your glasses, your computer, your camera or your speaker... There are more and more simultaneous connections with the phone. What the user is waiting for is that we guarantee a fluid experience on all these devices. They expect to move from one to the other without having to do or think anything. There is a very large investment now, at all levels, from Wi-Fi to the app to guarantee that experience. I think there are going to be great innovations in the coming years in that field.
