Tag Archives: California

Qualcomm In Muddy Waters In India

Remember Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacobs proudly claiming that his company had prevented WiMAX from getting a hold in India by acquiring BWA licenses in four regions of India. Well now Qualcomm is in a bit of bother as the Department of Telecommunication (DoT) in India has raised objections to the license application filed by Qualcomm. According to news circulating on the internet the DoT has objected to Qualcomm filing four separate applications through its nominee companies in the four regions (Delhi, Mumbai, Kerala and Haryana) it had won the licenses on June 12, 2010. Secondly the DoT has also objected to the delay in the filing of application outside the three month period required by the laws.

Qualcomm has rejected these objections saying that it has followed all rules in letter and spirit. According to Qualcomm the license application was filed in August 2010 within the three month period as required by the laws. However this is disputable as Qualcomm also submitted a revised application in December 2010. Qualcomm has also countered the second objection by saying that it plans to merge the four nominee companies so that there is no breach of law. As per the rules “if at any stage the spectrum allocation is revoked, withdrawn, varied or surrendered, no refund will be made”. So if an understanding is not reached between Qualcomm and DoT, Qualcomm is set to lose more than $1 billion that it had paid for the BWA spectrum.

Qualcomm Inc. is a leading wireless chip manufacturing company of the world. It is the pioneer of CDMA technology and its chipsets have been embedded in more than a billion cell phones. Qualcomm has greatly invested in UMTS technology and is a strong proponent of WCMDA, HSPA and LTE standards. It had a paid about a billion dollars for the right to use a 20 MHz chunk of spectrum in the 2.3 GHz band. It plans to bring TDD LTE to India, which is a considered to be a comparatively economical 4G technology.

Verizon 4G LTE Deployment Within California

We have previously looked at the birds eye view of 4G LTE coverage within the US. We know that Verizon 4G services are now available to more than 50% of the US population. However, geographically, the service is only available in very small islands of population. Now, we take a closer look at 4G LTE coverage within California.

LTE Coverage in CA

We see that the coverage is available in most of the population centers such as Sacramento, San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose, Fresno and Bakersfield. Further south the coverage is also available in areas around Los Angeles and San Diego. But what is not shown on this map is that there is no coverage in many smaller cities such as Stockton, Modesto, Santa Rosa and Visalia. Also there is no coverage on the highways connecting these cities e.g. there is no coverage on I-5 which runs along the length of the state.

Bottomline: You may get very good LTE coverage when you are at home but don’t expect the same when you are on the highway. You will most probably have to fall back to 3G.