Qualcomm gets former watchdog Cruickshank on board

Qualcomm has elected former UK telecoms director general and London Stock Exchange chairman Don Cruickshank to its board of directors.

Qualcomm chairman and CEO Irwin Jacobs said in a statement that Cruickshank "will be a valuable addition".

The Scot has previously worked at McKinsey, the NHS in Scotland, Times Newspapers, United Business Media, Virgin Group and most famously Oftel and then the LSE.

In the late 1990s he advanced the debate over deregulation of telecoms in the UK and tackled issues such as pan-European regulation and the possible merging of competition authorities, which happened years later with the formation of Ofcom.

The move comes as the US mobile technology company shakes up its long-standing executives. Founder Irwin Jacobs - widely known as the father of CDMA, the second most prevalent mobile communications technology after GSM - is due to be replaced by Paul Jacobs, his son and one of the driving forces behind the BREW applications environment.

Qualcomm has been upping its presence in Europe as 3G takes off. It will supply chipsets to other handset makers and many observers expect it to get BREW installed on non-CDMA-based handsets.