3GSM: Intel continues to bang WiMAX drum

Intel has been fleshing out its vision for WiMAX, the 802.16 standard often referred to as Wi-Fi's big sister.

In a keynote presentation at this year's 3GSM World Congress event, Intel president and COO Paul Otellini talked about a roadmap where WiMAX ships for customer premise equipment by 2005, in laptops by 2006 - as per the Centrino for Wi-Fi - and in handsets by 2007, marking the 2006-2008 timeframe as particularly important.

Analysts haven't typically focused on WiMAX as a technology for handsets.

The wide area standard - it has a maximum theoretical radius of about 70km - isn't being touted across the industry as a rival to Wi-Fi or 3G but as backhaul for some Wi-Fi roll outs and to fill in gaps in broadband availability where copper or cable isn't viable or economical. For that reason Intel is known to be talking about WiMAX with BT, among other operators.

Intel will start shipping its first WiMAX chips later this year but clearly the end game is integrating WiMAX with Wi-Fi or 3G silicon.

Speaking a day earlier, Sean Maloney, Intel Communications Group head, said: "Every single conversation [at the 3GSM conference] with forward-thinking operators includes WiMAX now."

But while Intel is thinking big at this year's event with WiMAX, it has also focused on its offerings for PDAs and phones. It has disclosed some more details about Bulverde, its next-generation application processor, and Hermon, a W-CDMA 3G communications processor family.

The hardware giant points to - at 45 per cent - a doubling by the end of 2003 of its share of the PDA processor market but with Hermon will look to smart phones, communicators and even feature phones and entry-level handsets.

A reference design dubbed ZOAR takes into account three radio technologies - quad-band GSM/GPRS, 802.11 and Bluetooth - and four mobile Oses - Linux, Windows Mobile, Palm OS and Symbian. Hermon allows for dual mode 3G phones or single mode phones for countries such as Japan where 3G coverage is ubiquitous.

Intel wouldn't confirm vendors that will use the products - industry pundits are looking for premier league handset-makers - but said AT&T Wireless, KPN, Orange and T-Mobile will all be offering Intel-based phones soon.