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Gilbert- "They want a European Qualcomm, not Qualcomm Europe"

Qualcomm's new European president, Andrew Gilbert, spoke of "a new consensus emerging" today in the EU community, and said "What European operators want is a way to make money." That points at Qualcomm's end-to-end expertise, including expertise in billing, said Gilbert.

Gilbert didn't challenge our comment suggesting that Qualcomm was perceived as a predatory licensing company - instead, he told NewsWireless in an exclusive interview that "the European operator community has experienced a lot of support, technical support and business support, in the last year, from Qualcomm." This, he suggested, meant that attitudes were changing.

The new 3G network in Europe is based on code division multiple access, rather than the time division multiple access system used in GSM phones. The technical challenges of making CDMA successful, said Gilbert, are now facing operators of Wideband CDMA, the 3G standard, which is a Qualcomm technology.

"There are guys on the ground who are trying to make a code technology work," said the new acceptable face of Qualcomm in Europe. "They have seen Qualcomm deal with the problems they have, and have seen Qualcomm put huge amounts of money and effort into helping them with doing this."

Gilbert acknowledged the scale of problems facing operators with their out-of-date billing systems as they transition to high data rates. "Qualcomm is one of the leaders of high speed 3G, HSDPA," he said, "and we offer a complete ecosystem, not just a technology. We are a technology company, but we also have other strengths."

And, he said, his appointment was definitely a sign that Qualcomm wanted to work with European operators. Gilbert is a Brit, and, he said: "it's a sign that the San Diego board don't just want a Qualcomm Europe, they want a European Qualcomm that does it the European way."

Qualcomm, he said, "is not just an air interface company; it's in every part of the mobile food chain. Everybody knows it's a licensing company with a lot of technology and Intellectual Property and chips. But it also has a huge suite of end to end service delivery mechanisms; Brew, all about delivering enhanced services, allowing the operator to make more money. That is not yet understood in Europe."

Speaking with his Flarion hat on, Gilbert said that he would expect Flash-OFDM to make further inroads - but, he added, with Qualcomm's expertise in making HSDPA work, he expected to build partnerships with operators who were committed to current 3G standards, as well as develop new technologies.

"The whole digital rights management issue, and how you deliver content in  a multi-regional way, is also a constraint," said Gilbert. "There are a whole host of issues the mobile industry will be exposed to. If we can partner with the operators to address these issues, with what we need to deliver, then running Qualcomm Europe - it's an interesting prospect. I hope we can solve European problems. I think we will discover that there are specifically European problems, which need the European Qualcomm to tackle." <1/>