Voice&Data Talkies #2: Rajen Vagadia, VP and President, Qualcomm India

Qualcomm is best known for its semiconductor business, especially in the smartphone business. Their Snapdragon chipsets power hundreds of millions of devices across the world. However, the tech giant also has a sizeable market share in network silicon, delivering network capabilities across the world.

At Qualcomm India, Rajen Vagadia leads as the VP & President. Vagadia has been at Qualcomm for the best part of the last decade, bringing with him rich experience at companies like Nokia and Reliance Infocomm.

Speaking with Voice&Data, Vagadia talked about Qualcomm's 5G adventure, and how the silicon giant has been a trailblazer in the development of the next generations of mobile networks.

At the MWC 2021, Qualcomm showed its intent with 5G silicon and software. Do you believe that Qualcomm will retake the leader’s spot with 5G, as it has done with previous generations?

Qualcomm led the world to 3G and 4G and is already leading in 5G. We are on the 4^th generation of our 5G products as 5G is set to become a game-changer in this age of rapid digital transformation as Qualcomm collaborates with industry leaders to drive commercial momentum for this.

This year at MWC, we announced several breakthrough innovations, including the new Snapdragon 888 Plus 5G Mobile Platform, which enables intelligent entertainment, AI-enhanced gameplay, streaming, photography, and more – all with superior performance, speed, and connectivity. As the industry is relying heavily on the O-RAN architecture for 5G, we also announced the industry’s first 3GPP Release 16 5G O-RAN platform, which brings major enhancements to RF with its support for all 3GPP approved mmWave and Sub-6 GHz bands.

In May, we announced the world’s first 10 Gigabit 5G and the first 3GPP release 16 modem-RF system, the software-upgradeable architecture allows futureproofing of solutions powered by the Snapdragon X65 which supports and enables acceleration of 5G expansion, while enhancing coverage, power efficiency and performance for users. And recently, we also launched the Qualcomm® Snapdragon™ X65 and X62 5G M.2 Reference Designs for accelerating 5G adoption across industry segments, including PCs, Always-Connected PCs (ACPCs), laptops, Customer Premises Equipment (CPEs), XR, gaming and other mobile broadband (MBB) devices.

What is the single biggest motivator for Qualcomm in 5G?

The advent of 3G and 4G drove a massive shift in the way industries performed. From consumers to business sectors like eCommerce, streaming, gaming, mobile payments, ride hailing, online banking, healthcare– everyone benefited from it. 5G, too, will be a technology for masses and transform the way the world connects, computes, and communicates. At Qualcomm, we develop new 5G technologies that redefine the boundaries of wireless technology, provide a robust roadmap for LTE advancements, and power widespread IoT use cases. To create a hyper-connected future and to deliver breakthrough innovation are the biggest motivators for Qualcomm around 5G.

In India, with inadequate fiber penetration, 5G will enable us to address the issue of Home Broadband and rural connectivity – something that help bridge the rural-urban divides and give a massive boost to the national economy. Our 5G FWA platform is designed for improved reach and performance and will enable network operators to make this new, last-mile broadband option more widely available across urban, suburban, and rural environments using the 5G network infrastructure.

Our focus is to deliver cutting-edge technologies and experiences to the ecosystem, and thereby, the end-consumer. Each day, we strive to enhance user experience with improved features and accessibility in smartphones.

Through intelligent connectivity, we also aim to add and deliver value beyond the regular mobile ecosystem and innovate for industries across. For instance, we are focusing extensively on auto and drone technology. We recently launched the world’s first drone platform and reference design to offer both 5G and AI-capabilities, the Qualcomm Flight RB5 5G Platform. This new solution will help accelerate development for commercial, enterprise, and industrial drones, and unleashes innovative possibilities for industries looking to adopt drone solutions and realize the benefits of the intelligent edge.

There are new use cases being developed for 5G every day. What are some of the most important ones?

The Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated the digital transformation of organizations across the world. From healthcare to banking to retail to MSMEs, all industries are seeking new ways to ensure business continuity and resilience. The coming months and years will see heightened demand for technologies that enable this, and 5G will provide the underlying connectivity for all of them.

We are just at the beginning of the 5G deployment cycles. New use cases, applications, experiences and services are poised to evolve in the coming year. Here are some use cases of 5G across sectors such as education, healthcare, smart cities, V2X, retail and so on.

In terms of education, 5G FWA will open new ways of learning and bridge many of the existing education gaps. This will benefit everyone, particularly the undeserved communities in the country. Along the same lines, Telemedicine has become a market in itself since the pandemic began, with a sharp rise in the number of online consultations. In the future, we will see the integration of Extended Reality (XR) into this segment. XR-powered tools can be used for medical training, teaching, or virtual therapy. 5G will also enable real-time monitoring of patients through wearables, and even remote surgeries.

In terms of large-scale use cases, we have smart cities. Qualcomm has a Smart Cities Accelerator Program that aims to connect cities, municipalities, government agencies and enterprises with an ecosystem of providers of Qualcomm’s smart-city solutions. 5G will help in reducing carbon footprint and enable applications such as smart automatic meter reading, traffic light management, and waste management.  “Connected” water supplies will enable real-time, remote monitoring of water conditions and sanitation equipment. This will enable quick identification and repair of old and faulty equipment.

Along with this, our scalable Snapdragon Cockpit platforms will help in redesigning in-vehicle experiences with intelligent capabilities that enhance safety for the vehicle’s occupants as well as for pedestrians and traffic. Lastly, a combination of 5G, AI, and IoT, known as “intelligent connectivity”, is driving the digital transformation of retail and providing opportunities to design new business models.

The collective power of the 5G ecosystem will drive many more use cases, some of which we cannot even imagine today. Our key objective is to enable as many technologies as possible so that the ecosystem leverages those for meaningful services and experiences.

Since its enterprise use cases are far more talked about than the consumer use cases, do you believe that 5G is an enterprise-oriented standard?

Granted that 5G has many enterprises related use cases – way more than any of the previous generations. However, it’s the consumer that still takes the center stage. First and foremost, 5G has already started improving the consumer user experience via improved streaming, better gaming, faster downloads, etc. Home broadband is another consumer use case. For operators, it will help by decongesting their networks so that they can provide better services to their customers.

From a consumer perspective, gaming and OTT entertainment are two of the many applications that will improve significantly with the advent of 5G. The recently launched Snapdragon 888 Plus 5G platform, the Snapdragon 778G 5G Mobile Platform, and the Snapdragon X65 5G Modem-RF System enable world-class, highly immersive gaming experiences, while our 5G compute platforms enable high speed of operation and longer battery life for laptops. Meanwhile, there is growing demand for high-quality streaming content. 5G will help network operators and content publishers deliver better OTT and video content, resulting in a big boost to data consumption in the country.

The objective of this technology is to connect everything. This opens new opportunities for an enterprise to be able to manage, monitor, control various process flows, equipment, resources within the enterprise. The benefits of 5G are well known for smartphones and other consumer use cases, however it’s the new use cases that excites the ecosystem. Specific features like ultra-reliable low latency are particularly suitable for enterprise and industrial applications

At this stage there is greater awareness and clarity around enterprise use cases. 5G and IoT will be leveraged on a massive scale by businesses of all types and sizes across industries and sectors. 5G private networks will power Industrial IoT and connected enterprises. These networks are easy to deploy and independently managed; they offer cellular-grade security; and they keep sensitive data local.

Since 5G will become a multi-trillion-dollar opportunity by the time this decade ends, do you feel that 5G will be the most influential of connectivity generations till date?

Technology, over the years has transitioned from voice to short message service to data and then to broadband data to smartphones and finally connected industries. There has been a continuous change that has been observed which further on will continue with 5G and the coming generations.

5G provides the foundation for connecting everyone and everything to each other. In terms of the number and the nature of applications it enables, 5G could arguably be considered the most powerful connectivity platform till date. According to a study by IHS Markit, 5G will enable $13.1 trillion of global sales activity and support more than 22 million jobs by 2035. These numbers indicate the kind of impact that 5G will have on economies worldwide. However, this does not mean that the older generations of connectivity will become irrelevant. 5G and 4G will coexist.

5G is being adopted faster than any other generation before. Why do you feel is that?

The last 25 years have witnessed networks evolve from 1G to 5G, with each generation of network pushing technology innovation to greater heights. During this time, consumers and industries, too, have becoming increasingly familiar with technologies and have started embracing them with much more confidence. The Gen Z, or centennials, among us are comfortable with technology and devices from an early age. It is safe to assume, therefore, that 5G will see much faster adoption than any previous generation of networks.

A lot of countries around the world, especially big industrial nations like China, United States of America and countries in Europe have started commercializing 5G, all at the same time. A lot more operators too are commercializing 5G at the same time as well. The ecosystem is quite in place and moreover, the consumer of today has a wide array of devices to choose from. For example, India has become the fourth largest market for smartphones supporting the next gen technology in terms of shipments, say market research firms. As per IDC, India trailed China, USA, and Japan in terms of 5G smartphone shipments at the lowest average selling price at $410.

5G technology provides flexibility to provide multiple band combinations and higher bandwidth. More than consumers, there are other industry verticals waiting to implement the technology namely auto, healthcare, IoT, etc.. Moreover, spectrum coverage is improving rapidly thereby expanding the network. This network offers much higher capacity because of features like massive MIMO beam formation. 5G will have many more use cases than the previous generation and the industry has realized that there will be far more opportunities as well.

Moreover, 5G, as compared to previous-generation networks, will cause much more widespread disruption across industries and enable technology innovation of unprecedented nature and levels. With 3G and 4G, the impact on automobile, and white goods, for instance, was limited. 5G, on the other hand, will spawn smart appliances and connected vehicles. Meanwhile, the pandemic has accelerated the development of adoption of technologies across the world, and this trend of digital transformation augurs well for 5G.

Furthermore, the spectrum offered on a 5G network will be very different from that on 4G. 5G network trials are being done on a spectrum of 800 MHz vs 40 MGz offered for a 4G network which automatically improves the adoption rate.

India has emerged as one of the key markets for 5G. Qualcomm already has a partnership with an Indian telco. Will Qualcomm seek more of such partnerships in India?

Operators are a big part of the 5G ecosystem. They are the ones who will deploy technologies for end user benefits. As the leader in 5G, we have significant experience of deploying, fine-tuning operator networks and we work with several operators globally. We also work with them to make sure that they deploy features that are really relevant as well as tune our platforms to their networks. As such, our platforms provide much better user experience.

In addition, we also work with startups on the technology front through programs like the Qualcomm Design in India Challenge (QDIC) which aims to accelerate innovations in India. Our VC arm, Qualcomm Ventures, has established a 5G Ecosystem Fund with the aim of leveraging 5G to convert innovative, breakthrough ideas into reality.

What are your views on satellite communications, more specifically, Internet from Space. Do you believe that the field has what it takes to match its claims? Does Qualcomm see itself venturing in this field in the foreseeable future?

We have strong experience of satellite-based communication technologies. We have not only used it meaningfully for location technologies but also for data communication. Technologies are constantly evolving and so are its user cases. While we cannot speculate on the future, I just want to add that many of the technologies today have been in development for several years before they were commercialized.

Recently, a few companies have stated their plans for research in 6G. Has Qualcomm joined the 6G party as well?

The development of any technology is a lengthy process that draws support and lessons from how the present technologies are adopted. 4G brought broadband connectivity from your computer to your handheld device. The issue that 5G must address is slightly deeper – to create a technology for a society that wants to be “always connected”; a technology that’s not just about people, but about everybody and everything.

Qualcomm is one of the leading contributors to the 5G standard. As 6G standards get defined by 3GPP or other global standard bodies, we will work with the industry to make sure that right choices/decisions are made for 6G on the various aspects of technology. Qualcomm will continue to make significant contributions to the ecosystem, and one will see us as a significant player.