5G launch: Every ‘G’ in cellular telephony is designed to solve a problem, says Qualcomm boss Cristiano Amon

Qualcomm boss Cristiano Amon joined the company as an engineer back in 1995 and, since then, has been involved in every single technology developed in wireless. During his recent visit to India, which coincides with India’s 5G launch, Amon says 5G as a fundamental technology that has been designed to be the last mile connectivity of everything beyond phones.

With commercial 5G services rolling out in the country, Amon, who is Qualcomm's President & CEO, believes that India will have a vital role to play in giving scale to 5G devices. He says 5G could be an instrumental technology to propel the digital-industrial transformation of the country and create an opportunity for Indian companies to play a larger role in the global ecosystem.

Speaking about the rollout of 5G and the development of 6G, Amon says, “When you think about wireless technology and generation development, there is a graceful transition of technologies. We usually start developing a new G (generation) a decade before that G gets developed. But during this process, many of the inventions and techniques designed for 5G ended up being applied to 4G. We expect that the same thing is going to happen. Many features being developed for 6G are likely to be part of 5G.”

Amon explains that every ‘G’ in cellular telephony has a problem to solve. “2G or digital cellular was about analog to digital – can we create a technology that everyone in the world can have a phone? 3G was about whether we could connect the phone to the internet. 4G was about bringing broadband and making the phone a computer, and it transformed society. With 5G, can we give a gigabit speed to everyone and everything? Can we ensure that we enable everything to be connected to the cloud, 100 per cent of the time,” says Amon.

Upbeat about the Indian market, the global semiconductor giant has been in India for a long time and is working on the advanced and deep design in the country. The company has nearly 18,000 employees in India, primarily engineers, of which 3000 were hired over the last twelve months. The US fabless company has incubated 100 start-ups in India to date and is also in discussions with Indian automobile companies for its technology solutions. Overall, Qualcomm is also changing from a communications company in the mobile industry into really a connected processor company.

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