ORLANDO-- Qualcomm is betting that the quality of service features built into its EV-DO Rev. A technology has more uses than VoIP and video conferencing. Qualcomm is targeting the technology into physician presence technologies in telemedicine, a vertical sector which requires not just a broadband connection but an assured connection due to the life-and-death medical situations unwired doctors would face.

Presenting the technology at CTIA Wireless, Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacobs and InTouch Techonlogies CEO Yulun Wang demonstrated a telemedicine robotic virtual doctor, which allows a physician to see and interact with patients--and allow patients to see him or her on an LCD screen—through a wide area Rev. A connection.

While wireless telemedicine is certainly not a new technology, Jacobs said that Rev. A’s QoS makes the technology particular apt for such applications. QoS can ensure that the signal quality and capacity allotted to a telemedicine session won’t degrade as more users access the network, preserving network resources for the medical procedure or consultation, Jacobs said.

“Some of the broadband technologies out there have not been built with quality of service in mind, WiMAX in particular,” Jacobs said. “You see the data rates drop off when you add multiple real-time services [to the same channel].”

While the first-generation of WiMAX services don’t support QoS, the WiMAX Forum is expected to add those features to its second wave of certification trials scheduled for next year. And while UMTS technologies are not currently built with QoS in mind, when HSUPA is launched later this year, QoS is expected to be a critical feature. Qualcomm, however, maintains the Rev. A was originally designed for services like VoIP and is therefore optimized for QoS-dependant applications.