Qualcomm Uses Files.com for Modem-Log Collection Across Three Simultaneous Carrier Assessments

Qualcomm designs the modems and mobile processors inside much of the world’s smartphone fleet. That position carries a field obligation. When a mobile network underperforms, the handset side of the measurement is Qualcomm’s side, and Qualcomm’s engineers are the ones who go find out why.

“We go out to these different markets when an operator needs help, like T-Mobile or Verizon, and we do network performance assessments, capturing logs from the phone side, the UE side, while they capture their own logging on the network side.”

Each assessment produces modem logs captured off individual handsets, and single log files routinely reach several gigabytes. The systems that turn those logs into answers live on servers inside Qualcomm’s own network, reachable only over VPN. So the data is born in the field, at a carrier site, and the analysis happens on-prem. The whole problem lives in the distance between those two facts.

Files.com ultimately turned that gap into a shared collection workflow: three contractor teams could upload from the field without VPN access while Qualcomm’s analysis systems stayed on-prem.

Multi-Gigabyte Logs, Stranded Where They Were Captured

From a carrier market, Qualcomm’s internal servers were often out of reach. VPN connectivity from field sites was unreliable at best, which meant a day of capture could leave an engineer holding gigabytes of logs with no way to deliver them until they were back inside the network. Analysis waited on travel.

The obvious fixes were closed off. The files were far too large for email or consumer sharing tools. The analysis systems were on-prem and were staying on-prem, so the answer could never be broader network access. And external contractors could not be given internal access at all.

For years the problem stayed the size of one engineer. Jared Ayo, a Senior Support Engineer on the field team, routed his own captures through a Files.com site whenever he was working a market and could not connect internally, and monthly volume stayed consistently under a terabyte. Files.com had handled one engineer’s workflow. Its role as a program-wide collection layer had not yet been tested.

Three Markets at Once Turned a Workaround Into the Workflow

In 2025 it was tested. A carrier engagement required network performance assessments in three markets simultaneously, an effort substantially larger than the team’s normal cadence. Qualcomm brought in three contractor teams, one per market, and none of them had, or could have, access to Qualcomm’s internal infrastructure.

The program needed a collection point that worked from any market with no VPN, accepted single files in the multi-gigabyte range, gave three outside firms and Qualcomm’s own engineers shared access to the same folders at the same time, and let back-end engineers pull everything down into the on-prem analysis systems. The Files.com site Ayo had been running became that collection point for the entire program.

One Files.com Site Between the Handsets and the On-Prem Estate

The architecture is deliberately thin. The Files.com site holds user accounts for Qualcomm engineers and for each contractor team, all working in shared folders. Field teams upload through the web or SFTP from wherever they are. Multi-gigabyte log files go up whole, with no splitting and no staging.

On the other side, back-end engineers pull logs down from the site into Qualcomm’s internal systems for processing. The internal servers never open to the field and never touch a contractor credential; only the collection layer is hosted. Because the two sides are decoupled, they overlap. While a market is still capturing, an engineer on the back end is already pulling that morning’s logs off the site and processing them.

Analysis Starts While the Field Is Still Capturing

With Files.com in place as the collection layer, Qualcomm replaced a field workflow bounded by VPN reachability with one bounded by what the teams can capture.

• Three contractor teams covered three carrier markets simultaneously through one site, working alongside Qualcomm staff with no VPN and no internal accounts.
• Log processing begins while capture is still running in the field, instead of waiting for logs to make it back inside the network.
• Monthly storage and transfer grew from consistently under a terabyte to several terabytes as the program ramped, absorbed without any change to the on-prem analysis systems.
• Adoption spread on its own: other Qualcomm teams that collect logs in the field began asking for access to the same site.

The compounding result is the quieter one. The next field program, whatever its size, starts with folders and user accounts rather than a network project.

The Back End Never Had to Change

Today a Qualcomm field engineer finishes a capture at a carrier site and uploads the logs before leaving the market. A contractor firm joins a program by receiving a Files.com account, not by asking Qualcomm’s network team for an exception. And the analysis systems the whole operation feeds sit exactly where they always did: internal, on-prem, untouched.

Files.com became the reachable layer between where Qualcomm’s modem logs are created and where they are understood. Field collection did not have to wait for the VPN, and the back end did not have to move, for an operation that was once one engineer and one market to run three markets at once.