SAN DIEGO—Qualcomm Inc. announced that its future chipsets would support the AWS band (1700/2100 MHz). The Federal Communications Commission is planning to auction licenses in the AWS band in August.
According to Luis Pineda, a marketing and product management vice president at Qualcomm, “Our RF chipsets deliver support for frequencies that have already been commercially allocated for 3G wireless, as well as for anticipated, future frequency allocations.”
The FCC’s auction would add yet another frequency band into the U.S. wireless marketplace. Indeed, U.S. handset vendors may eventually need to support up to seven different bands in their products.
According to component analysts, the real challenge in this scenario will be making these multi-band chips work in small handsets, where radio interference could become an issue. Combining modes and bands in a single handset can impact handoffs between cell sites and lead to interference between the various incoming and outgoing signals, and filter makers will benefit if they can resolve these issues, according to Chris Taylor, an analyst with Strategy Analytics.
