INTEL’S WIMAX FUTURE 13/04/2005

With almost all laptops now shipping with Wi-Fi it seems only right that Intel should start talking about its next wireless technology, WiMax. Sean Maloney, general manager of Intel's mobility group, was in town to discuss the rollout of WiMax. Intel has been working on the WiMax technology for three years, with one of the main reasons for its implementation as

Many have seen it as a rival for 3G but Maloney suggested that while 3G will be a competing technology, due to its relative bandwidth it will be used for small data packages and mainly for voice. Commenting on 3G. Maloney said, “3G has no standard, it’s fragmented but it has a future. We’ll always need voice services. WiMax is a layer that will sit on top and offer wider bandwidth”.

According to Maloney’s time scale, the first version of the service, 802.16d, will be made available to users in the second half of this year and will consist of an external box. Laptop users will need to wait a year and the rollout of 802.16e before we start to see the migration of the technology into the mobile form factor.

However, there seems to be a lack of clarity as to whether this is actually possible. With Wi-Fi still currently occupying the PCI-slot in most mobiles, this would mean Intel would need to integrate Wi-Fi into the chipset a lot sooner than it is proposing in order to make way for the use of WiMax adapters in laptops.

The vision from Maloney’s team seems to be one centred on Wi-Fi linking the internal areas of a building or campus, with WiMax handling the backhaul. The expectation being that by 2007, Wi-Fi will be prevalent in most homes, so why try and make people change? With no agreements in place with regards frequencies and how it will be deployed, the rollout of WiMax needs to be placed high on most peoples agendas.

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