The former and current CEOs of Qualcomm – Irwin and Paul Jacobs, respectively – fired a warning shot to operators this week during their appearance at CTIA Wireless IT & Entertainment, declaring that femtocells and other methods of increasing the density of radio networks will be key to future success. “We are getting to the point in the lab (where) we have done what we know how to do to optimise any given radio wave,” Reuters cited Paul Jacobs (pictured) as stating. The mobile industry has already pushed the limits of technology designed to increase mobile Web speeds from wireless airwaves, the duo claimed.

Reuters reports that the father and son team declared that future speed increases will come from operators using a lot more network hardware than in today’s networks. This will mean adding so-called femtocells (small home base stations), or short range networks in subscribers’ homes and offices. “That’s how we’re going to get these big increases,” said Jacobs. “We think we can get eight to 10 times improvement in user experience by building up a dense network and managing the interference between the macro network and these femto networks.” Qualcomm co-founder Irwin Jacobs said operators should realise that supporting the femtocell networks “does indeed expand our available spectrum (and) allows us to give many more services and therefore will be good for our business.” Meanwhile an Unstrung report noted that Paul Jacobs also identified backhaul challenges as a massive issue for operators with data services. The current CEO claimed that other networks may offer a partial solution, for example, offloading traffic via WiFi or dedicated video networks such as Qualcomm’s Media FLO might help with future congestion.