Short History of Qualcomm

In 1985 a company was founded in San Diego California. Today you would call it a start-up. It was Qualcomm (from Quality Communication). Two of the seven founders were Irvin Jacobs and Andrew Viterbi. Both founders were pioneers of communication technology before founding Qualcomm. For example, Andrew Viterbi developed the algorithm named after him for channel decoding for convolutional coder.

Qualcomm initially focused on contract research for communications projects. They used this contract work to develop their own technology for digital communication: CDMA. They applied for a patent for this technology as early as 1986.

At the end of the 1980s, the telecom world was working of first systems for digital mobile communication. In Europe this was a TDMA system called GSM and in America it was IS-54 Digital AMPS. The standardization in the US was organized by the TIA.

Development of a proprietary mobile communication standard

The TDMA standards were based on major developments and research from established telecommunications companies such as Ericsson or Bell Laboratories. Qualcomm developed its own mobile communications standard with just a small team. It was a bit like David versus Goliath. In 1989, Qualcomm submitted its TIA standard as an alternative to the TDMA standard for future digital cellular systems. The TIA reviewed the technology and rejected it after a few months. The TIA preferred the TDMA based system which would become IS-54. Another company might have given up on its efforts now. But not Qualcomm. They continued to work on their technology and spoke directly to mobile operators.

Mobile Standards in the US

It should be mentioned again at this point that the American mobile phone market was significantly different from the European market. There was no cell phone network spread across the entire United States. Each area had its own network and two operators. Even if all operators used the AMPS standard, there was no guarantee that a New York AMPS phone would be able to make calls in Los Angeles. It was only many years later that the local providers merged to form large providers that operated nationwide.

There was also no requirement in America that cell phones had to comply with the TIA standard. In fact, the American government left it up to industry to find the best methods for cellular communications. AT&T had a monopoly position in telecommunications until the 1980s. This was broken up and it was ensured that there were always several competing providers.

Role of the FCC

The only binding regulations for a cellular system came from the FCC, the Federal Communications Commission, which was responsible for approving wireless systems. So if a system complied with FCC requirements and an operator had a license for the spectrum, they could theoretically use whatever they wanted. Qualcomm managed to persuade several operators in the USA to use their system instead of the TDMA system. Here, Qualcomm promised operators that their system was far superior to the TDMA system, with up to a 10-fold increase in capacity. The successful first attempts with CDMA even convinced Motorola, which had previously only relied on TDMA. Motorola then began licensing Qualcomm’s CDMA technology and producing devices for CDMA.

Qualcomm was initially forced to produce all technologies itself. They created base stations, switching centers, mobile devices and even ASICs for the special parts of CDMA.

CDMA become IS-95 Standard

In 1993, so many operators had already chosen to use CDMA that the TIA decided to standardize CDMA. Since then it has had the commercial name CDMAOne and the associated standard was called IS-95. A small Californian start-up company had managed to assert itself alongside the large technology companies and the fight for technology leadership had only just begun. In 1997, more than half of America’s cellular systems were CDMA based.