Qualcomm Europe chief bullish on 5G race

Enrico Salvatori argued there is “big traction and interest” in 5G from all of Europe’s major operators, following concerns the continent was lagging behind Asia and the US.

The US tech giant’s president of EMEA operations  said the market is “open to multiple directions” when it comes to the first 5G services, echoing the sentiment that enhanced mobile broadband – “the smartphone migration to 5G” – is an early case using sub-6GHz spectrum.

He also acknowledged the potential for mmWave frequencies, “where the fixed wireless access CPE [customer premises equipment] devices will play a role”.

With regard to making suitable spectrum available across the continent, Salvatori said: “I don’t see challenges, I see a programme that has to be executed. So we need to stay on track with the schedule, the auctions, so the regulators making available the spectrum at the proper time, in 2018, and then the operators taking part and bidding.”

With testing and spectrum auctions taking place this year, commercial launches will pick up pace moving into the second half of 2019.

Following questions about Qualcomm’s future, in light of Broadcom’s aborted bid and Paul Jacobs’ efforts to take over the company, and with the NXP deal still dragging on, the executive said that Qualcomm Europe is “happy and focused”, working on its 5G programme.

“We are working with the ecosystem, so we need to align the operators, we need to align the infra vendors, we are working with all our partners, Nokia, Ericsson, testing with Huawei, Samsung, all of them,” he said.