The big idea is to give its telecom operator mates a leg up with the fresh use cases and apps that'll pop up on the fifth-gen mobile networks.

The news has leaked out from India where Qualcomm VP Gautam Sheoran was saying that his outfit was  investing in advanced modems with AI capability that improves modem performance.

“We are investing in advanced features like eight receive antennas for sub-6 gigahertz. The data needs will continue to grow in India so we are already looking at it,” Sheoran said.

“In enterprises, work is happening on 5G on the edge, edge AI for example. So, instead of sending all that telemetry data to the cloud, you could just turn it on the device side. This is another area we are investing in,” he added.

Sheoran mentioned that while Indian telecom bigwigs were busy rolling out networks on sub-6GHz waves, they're interested in giving the millimetre-wave (mm-wave) band a whirl for different use cases.

“I know all the operators in India are talking about trialling (mmWave), although they are leading with sub-6 gigahertz. We think millimetre wave will play a significant role as data consumption increases,” he said.

The 26GHz band's a bit of a speed demon, offering high throughput but at a bit of a shorter range, perfect for data-hungry apps like 5G fixed wireless access (FWA), connected motors, extended reality (XR), and private 5G networks for the big corporates.

“India is one of the countries that allocated significant millimeter wave spectrum to the major operators. Although the operators are trialing small-scale deployments for the fixed wireless access use case for homes, as well as, enterprises. Another use case we see with millimeter wave is the multi-dwelling unit,” Sheoran said.

“We are seeing this in the USA, Europe, Australia, Japan and we think the use case for that in India is also quite significant,” he added.