Betting on silicon for WiFi

On his first trip to India, Paul S Otellini, President and COO, Intel, said that one Wi-Fi access point is being deployed every three seconds, somewhere in the world, and that Intel would be "the clear leader in providing silicon" for products in this space.

Intel's faith in the future of Wi-Fi can be gauged by Otellini's statement that Wi-Fi will change the face of computing and would create a new generation of applications based on locational computing. There are "27,000 new access points being deployed every day", he said in a keynote address to industry executives and users.

Intel has plans to spend up to a reported $ 300 million to build a wireless environment in terms of hot-spots, partnerships with service providers like hospitality chains and airlines, wi-fi applications, and Centrino promotion. While not directly confirming this figure, Otellini agreed that Intel had very serious and long-term promotional plans in this space. WiFi connectivity is one of the main features of Centrino, Intel's new mobile platform.

Centrino on the notebook PC and Manitoba on the PDA are Intel's technology pieces that enable wireless computing.

Continuing on the wireless front, Otellini re-iterated Intel's commitment to deployment of the slower but widely-entrenched 802.11b "WiFi" standard, as well as deployment of the faster, dual-band 802.11g, later this year.

Asked by Cyber News Service, Otellini said that WiFi hadn't yet seen a killer app equivalent to Windows on the PC.

In response to another question, he said that there did not seem to be any clear indications of the revival of the telecom sector in the near future. But, he said, wireless computing was going to be adopted very rapidly, by enterprises.

Intel has spent over $ 10 billion on some 30 acquisitions in the wireless, networking and communications space. Yet, it is a marginal or secondary player in most of these areas, as products go. Otellini refuted this by saying that Intel has a pervasive approach to computing, whereas its competitors in the wireless space are restricted in their ventures. "As we build upon WiFi and communications technology, we are getting better," he said.

He added that the acquisitions were strategic, and technologies were often integrated into Intel tech developments. "Our Xircom acquisition led to key developments in the Centrino platform," he said.

Talking about the future trends on enterprise computing, Otellini said that enterprises will need to do a lot of refreshing of their hardware, focus on wireless, and adopt Intel-based enterprise servers. Intel itself, while cutting IT budgets by 10 percent, is planning to buy 35,000 new PCs, mainly notebooks, and is making 80 of its 134 sites worldwide wireless-enabled, providing mobility to 20,000 of its employees.

Otellini also said that in 2003, the worldwide revenue share of Intel-based servers could outstrip RISC-based systems, for the first time. While in 2002, Intel was way ahead in numbers, with 88 percent of the servers sold, it was behind in revenue share.

Emphasizing the importance of India as a key partner for Intel, Otellini said that India was Intel's largest non-manufacturing site outside US, with plans to take headcount in India from the existing 1,100 to 3,000 by the year 2005. Intel's employee strength in India grew 10 times in the last three years. New investments are being proposed in India in the areas of software
development, hardware design, sales and marketing, as well as Intel Capital's funding activities.

Cyber News Service