Speed increases in mobile data services will require more densely built networks, executives from wireless chip and technology supplier Qualcomm Inc said on Thursday.

The wireless industry has already pushed the limits of technology designed to increase mobile Web speeds from wireless airwaves, they said.

We are getting to the point in the lab (where) we have done what we know how to do to optimize any given radio wave, Qualcomm Chief Executive Paul Jacobs said at the CTIA show in San Diego.

Future speed increases will come from operators using a lot more network hardware than in today's networks. This will mean adding so-called femtocells, or short range networks in subscribers' homes and offices.

That's how we're going to get these big increases, said Jacobs. We think we can get eight to 10 times improvement in user experience by building up a dense network and managing the interference between the macro network and these femto networks.

Qualcomm co-founder Irwin Jacobs said wireless operators should realize that supporting the femto networks does indeed expand our available spectrum (and) allows us to give many more services and therefore will be good for our business.

Paul Jacobs said that while he does not support allowing wireless operators to decide which Internet service to allow on their networks, the companies should be allowed to manage data traffic.

We are on the side of, yes, you have to be able to do something to manage your network, but it's not the right thing to go in and say one service or another is OK, he told CTIA attendees. (Reporting by Gina Keating in San Diego; Writing by Sinead Carew in New York; Editing by Tim Dobbyn)

Electronics Qualcomm