Intel teams up with Asian telcos for Wi-Fi

Singapore's infocomms regulator and chip giant Intel have teamed up with five Asian telcos to look into the two big roadblocks to seamless Wi-Fi roaming: the lack of common network standards and integrated subscriber billing.

The Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA) and Intel will work with Singapore's MobileOne, SingTel and StarHub, Hong Kong's PCCW and China Mobile, according to an IDA statement.

Since March this year, Intel and IDA have worked to identify the obstacles faced by operators. The lack of one-bill roaming and a standard architecture for building Wi-Fi networks were named as key problems holding back widespread adoption of mobile computing, said the statement.

The new collaboration will work towards standards for seamless connectivity and participants will supply the interoperable hardware, software and services to help solve these problems.

The group will submit their findings and recommendations to relevant global industry standards bodies when the trial ends in July 2004.

Asian companies are leading in making it more convenient and easier for users to roam across different networks and when challenges like one-bill roaming are resolved, using Wi-Fi around the world has the chance to become as easy as making a mobile phone call, said Intel executive VP Sean Maloney in the statement.

Intel has invested $300m in marketing its Centrino bundle of notebook PC chips, which include a Wi-Fi component. In the next five years, according to data from research firm Pyramid Research, 707 million people will be using Wi-Fi technology worldwide.

By investing in solutions to overcome thorny problems of hardware and software interoperability, the world's largest chipmaker hopes to build momentum in use-anywhere mobile computing, which it sees as propelling the next wave of spending on personal computers.

One-bill Wi-Fi roaming, which allows subscribers to move from Wi-Fi hot spots run by different operators yet see only one bill, requires operators to invest in integrating computing back-ends on the scale of that seen in mobile phone roaming.

In March this year, Starhub joined broadband providers China Netcom, Korea Telecom, Maxis from Malaysia and Telstra from Australia to form the Wireless Broadband Alliance (WBA).

However the two initiatives - WBA and IDA-Intel - are different. The former is for real-world adoption, while the latter is for equipment makers to test wireless enhancements, according to Walter Lee, StarHub Interactive's head of business IP.

Recently, local rival SingTel has also formed a Wi-Fi alliance with roaming carrier GRIC Communications.

In response to questions about how current SingTel-GRIC subscribers will be affected by the new alliance, SingTel spokesperson Foo Kim Leng said that the IDA-Intel initiative is only a first step towards addressing Wi-Fi roaming issues and that it is still early to see how it will affect Wi-Fi users.

Lynn Tan writes for CNET Asia.