Yanitsa Boyadzhieva, TelecomTV:
Hello, you're watching telecom tv. We are joining from the Mobile World Congress 2024 in Barcelona. Now I'm delighted to be joined by Patrick Ribardiere, Senior Director Product Marketing at Qualcomm. Hi Patrick. Thank you for joining us.

Partick Ribardiere, Qualcomm:
Thank you. Thank you for coming over. Welcome, welcome to Qualcomm.

Yanitsa Boyadzhieva, TelecomTV:
Thank you. So we are at one of the original connectivity shows, but this year we even saw announcements coming out of CES recently related to wifi seven. How significant is this and what can we expect to see in the next 12 months?

Partick Ribardiere, Qualcomm:
Right, so wifi seven is a reality. The question is not if wifi seven will happen. It is when wifi seven will happen and wifi seven is happening already. Now, we have had customer shipping for a while now, our solution or in mass production, wifi seven is a reality and everybody wants it. It is one of the big highlight of the show.

Yanitsa Boyadzhieva, TelecomTV:
So how will the wifi seven era revolutionize the enterprise home connectivity and gaming? For example,

Partick Ribardiere, Qualcomm:
Wifi seven is truly revolutionary in term of new generation of wifi. It brings a couple of features, three very important features to the ecosystem that will really make a difference. The first one being the full use of six gigahertz. We know with channels up to 320 megahertz, that will give you a much higher speed and we will translate in lower latency. So second feature is MLO Multilink optimization. Multilink optimization is actually the capability to use any of the three channel of wifi, 2.45 or six gigahertz in the best possible way, meaning at the time where you need to send your packet, you're going to decide, okay, which channel should be the best for me to send that packet? Is it the 2.4 gigahertz? Is it the five gigahertz? Is it the six gtz? In this particular case, maybe the six gt. So I'm going to send it over the six GT link.

Now the next packet comes and there is something happening on the six gtz band. So maybe five gigahertz is the best link for me now. So then I'm going to use five gigahertz to send my next packet and so on and so forth. What it does is if anything happened in your home, or let's say one of your neighbors starts downloading a movie, and this neighbor uses the same wifi channel as the one you are using today. If you don't have MLO, it's going to translate into you having to wait for him to download this movie or part of his movie. In order for you to send your information to your device. With MLO, you detect that there is now this interference, that there is this noisy neighbor that is downloading a movie and you're going to send it onto the 60 girls band, for example, or another band that you, the one that is the most interesting. The third feature of wifi seven, which is also very interesting, is called adaptive puncturing. What Adaptive puncturing allows you to do is to carve out a little bit of the wifi spectrum when there is a perturbation. So let's say that same scenario, right?

I don't know. You're on a video call and at one point there is an interference that comes right at the time where you are talking, or in the middle of an interaction. Traditionally, what wifi would do is it would detect that there is an interference and it would say, oops, I need to change channel. I'm going to stop everything and I'm going to move to another channel. With interference puncturing, what you do is instead you carve out in frequency a little opening where your interferences, but you keep using the rest, meaning you have no interruption, you have no delay, and you can keep going on your wifi code.

Yanitsa Boyadzhieva, TelecomTV:
The Fast Connect seven 900 is one of the announcements you made this year, enabling wifi, Bluetooth and ultra white band technologies on a single chip. How this can enable high performance, low latency, and low power connectivity.

Partick Ribardiere, Qualcomm:
Yes. So this device is our second generation of wifi mobile chip set. Okay. And it is AI ready. So it introduces AI into the wifi world. We are the first one to do that, I believe, or at least we're leading the market. And thanks to ai, it'll allow you to optimize your latency or your power depending on the condition that the device sees on its network at any given time. So we believe that we will translate into a significant power savings on the device and also much better latency, much better user experience for the consumer.

Yanitsa Boyadzhieva, TelecomTV:
And can you tell us about the 10 G fiber gateway platform?

Partick Ribardiere, Qualcomm:
Yes. But before we move to the 10 G fiber gateway, this device is the 7,900 Fast Connect. 7,900 has several other features that are interesting to note. This device introduces ultra wideband together with Bluetooth to together with wifi. Why is it important with virtual wide then you can now have secure keys from your wifi device. You get closer to your laptop, for example, your phone is going to be able to tell your laptop, Hey, it's me. Now unlock no need for password, right? Just by doing this also with the use of those three technology together, we can do now ranging. So for example, you've lost your earbud, not the earbud case, but the earbud, right? Somewhere you're going to start looking for it. With wifi, you're going to closer with Bluetooth, and then you're going to finally get it with ultra wide band. Ultra wide band will give you the exact positioning that you need to find for your device.

So that's another very, very interesting feature. We believe the third feature is called HBS, IB Bend Simultaneous. Right now, if you position yourself with your devices, up to now your phone was just a client device, meaning it was receiving information. But more and more your phone also send information to other devices, right? And with regular devices, up to now, you would have to use one band of wifi to receive the information. And typically that would be your high frequency bands, the band that is faster, and you were left with the low band 2.4 gigahertz to then transmit to the other device. With HBS, you can use five gigahertz and six gigahertz, which are two very high speed bands in order to not lose anything in the transmission and keep the fastest possible speed and the lowest possible latency. So those three features are very, very important. We believe that it truly helps create a next generation of product.

Yanitsa Boyadzhieva, TelecomTV:
And can you tell us more about the 10 G fiber gateway platform?

Partick Ribardiere, Qualcomm:
Yes. Yes, yes, yes, yes. So Qualcomm is a leader in wireless, right? What we realize also is that, so broadband world has also moved from technology, older technologies like DSL to fiber technologies, which are also very high speed and very fast throughput technologies. It was natural for Qualcomm who is offering the wifi solution, which is offering the CPU solution that manage the wifi and the 5G to also add fiber. So we invested in a 10 GEGS bond solution, which were announced last September. We now have devices in development. We anticipate products on the market very, very soon. It is being a huge success for us. Customers have been very, very happy with Qualcomm jumping in, focusing on newer technologies and reinforcing our cellular arm with now broadband fiber arm.

Yanitsa Boyadzhieva, TelecomTV:
EE from the UK has announced earlier this year that they have partnered with Qualcomm on the development of their wifi seven home broadband smart hub, and also last month free in France, rolled out the wifi seven free box ultra to their subscribers. Would you say wifi seven has become the go-to technology for broadband service providers in Europe? And what does that change for their clients?

Partick Ribardiere, Qualcomm:
Most definitely. It is a technology that all carriers are adopting today. Each and every carrier we are talking to is either developing, launching, or in the early stages of development of their new gateway. And wifi seven, wifi seven is going to bring lower latency, higher speed, more flexibility, the capability to manage all the devices in your home in a much more efficient way. So wifi seven is definitely the way to go, and it's being acknowledged and implemented by the service provider as we speak.

Yanitsa Boyadzhieva, TelecomTV:
Yes, Patrick, thank you for speaking with us.

Partick Ribardiere, Qualcomm:
Thank you so much, Yani. Appreciate it.