- China will remain a central force in 6G development and standards work despite broader geopolitical tensions, according to Qualcomm executives
- Executives argued that cellular standards work remains largely technical, with global roaming acting as a powerful incentive
- Qualcomm licensing chief John Han said fragmentation would directly affect licensing – and he’s heard no indication from contacts in China that they want a separate 6G standard
SAN DIEGO—Qualcomm executives hosting a 6G Leadership Day here on Wednesday could hardly dodge the question. How do they see China’s role in 6G innovation and standardization?
The query came, appropriately enough, during a Q&A session attended by a contingent of Chinese journalists and analysts invited by the company. (Full disclosure: Qualcomm paid for this author’s travel and accommodations for this trip.)
The questioner identified herself as being with the Xinhua News Agency, China’s largest, official state-run press organization.
Qualcomm: China looms large
China is “incredibly important as an ecosystem” for telecom and Qualcomm specifically, with operators China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom leading the way, said John Smee, who heads the Global Wireless Research team at Qualcomm.
His company employs an R&D team in China, where he attended the MWC Shanghai event about two months ago, he said.
He didn’t name Chinese behemoth Huawei but said many Chinese companies participate actively in 3GPP, and Qualcomm’s standards team in China works closely with organizations like the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT) and China Academy of Telecommunications Technology (CATT).
The purpose is to make sure there’s one global standard that everyone can execute on as an ecosystem.
That’s a reasonable goal, considering the history of fragmentation in global standards. It happened with China’s pursuit of TD-SCDMA in 3G and threatened to occur in 5G. So, one can pretty much count on it being a question mark for any new generations of wireless technologies coming down the pike.
Global roaming is a big deal
In a separate Q&A session, analyst Ron Westfall of HyperFrame Research asked, with a nod to China, about steps that are being taken to assure there’s no fragmentation across the 6G standard.
Lorenzo Casaccia, head of Technology Standards at Qualcomm, said it’s a fair question and he’s “completely confident” that 6G will be a worldwide standard.
The reason the global standard for cellular communications is so resilient is tied directly to the importance of global roaming. He related it to his own experience years ago as a young backpacker who traveled to “very strange places” around the world and his phone worked everywhere he went.
That relevance pertains equally around the world.
“There's a lot of Chinese companies that participate in 3GPP in the same way that there's a lot of companies from Europe, a lot of companies from the U.S. So in general, I think the geopolitical argument tends to be a little bit overblown once you talk about these very, very technical activities,” he said.
In sum, “I still regard the standardization of cellular systems as very technically driven, not really geopolitically driven,” he said.
John Han, EVP and GM of the Qualcomm Licensing Technology business unit, echoed that sentiment.
Licensing is directly affected when fragmentation threatens standards, and these days, when he talks to friends and colleagues in China, “there's absolutely no indication they're thinking about having a different standard” for 6G, he said.
Read more about Qualcomm and 6G:
Q&A: 6G is coming - Qualcomm’s John Smee on AI, connectivity and the future of everything
3GPP to hunker down on 6G air interface in 2025
6G sensing R&D advances, as some question its business value