Intel Moves Ahead with WiMax Efforts

By Suzanne Deffree -- Electronic News, 2/25/2004

WiMax will become as important to consumers as Wi-Fi. That was the message of Intel Corp. at this week's 3GSM World Congress, one of the wireless industry's largest event.

Pulling out the big name executives and sporting two new products at the event, Intel called this the beginning of a "wireless decade," predicting that WiMax will play as big a role in the wireless consumer arena as Wi-Fi is growing into in the PC space.

"The wireless industry is evolving from a web of independent networks into a single, integrated wireless network with multiple standards, and no single standard is sufficient anymore," Intel President and COO Paul Otellini said at a conference keynote. "There won't be a battle of competing technologies. It will be a requirement that Wi-Fi, WiMax, and 3G coexist; and that coexistence is going to enable a host of exciting new applications and business models."

Otellini also used his stage time to focus on the impact of Moore's Law on the cellular and handheld market segments.

"Our vision for WiMax is that it will roll out over time, starting at the end of this year/beginning of next year, with fixed outdoor installs where you have a WiMax antenna on a building or outside of your home to do a last mile consumer access as a DSL utility or doing backhaul for a hot-spot," said Shantanu Gupta , director of marketing, for Intel communications group, backing the Intel president in a separate interview with Electronic News. 

"Second half of 2005, we plan to enhance that and bring it in doors, basically giving it much better through-the-wall capability. Then by 2006/2007 with [802].20 we plan to introduce for wireless capability for WiMax," he continued. "Imagine having a piece of WiMax silicon in your laptop or cell phone and moving around between 20 or 30 miles in your home area with full broadband wireless access. In our minds, that enables what we truly think of as best connected advantage for people. That's the ultimate vision, enabling a seamless connection."

But Wi-Fi will not be forgotten at Intel, especially after its massive marketing campaign for its Centrino product. The company recently released an 802.11b/g version of the chipset and has plans for an a/b/g version later this year.

"You will continually hear about Wi-Fi. There's a whole roadmap for Wi-Fi that will continue to evolve," Gupta said. "What WiMax does is it augments a broader range and a little bit of mobility over time."

The company also today released details on two new wireless products, dubbed Hermon and Zoar.

Hermon, an Intel family of 3G processors, is based on XScale and includes a dual mode UMTS/wide-band CDMA (WCDMA) solution with an advanced receiver architecture for maintained of higher quality signals and fewer dropped calls for 3G phones. The upcoming family also features Intel Quick Capture technology for full videoconferencing capability. So far, four manufactures -- T-Mobile, AT&T Wireless, KPN and Orange -- have stated that they intend to produce cell phones based on Hermon processors.

Zoar, a three-radio reference design for cell phones with Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GSM/GPRS capability built-in, runs Intel's latest applications processor, codenamed “Bulverde.” The multi-mode reference platform also uses 64Mbytes of StrataFlash memory, Intel's product signifying its recent reemergence into flash.

Intel predicts a WiMax "inflection point" in the 2006 to 2008 timeframe similar to what happened with Wi-Fi over the past few years, and expects WiMax capability would be available in notebook computers by 2006, followed by handsets in 2007.

The company will begin shipping its first WiMax chips later this year.