Intel wildly optimistic about WiMAX

SEAN MALONEY, general manager of Intel's mobility group is here in old London Town. He said that Intel realised some years ago that fibre wasn't the answer to delivering broadband He said that while there were lots of technical challenges with Wimax, Intel had gotten over them one by one.

He said that Intel has just shipped its first production chips for wireless DSL. The second version, 16e, is probably three to four months behind schedule.

He said Intel's feeling is that we're heading towards a global WiMAX standard and will see economies of scale. Signals, he said, penetrate better than people expected and there's a growing confidence people will give coverage.. He said that Intel is arguing that spectrum for WiMAX should be technologically agnostic because something better than WiMAX may come along. In Europe the argument revolves around 2.5GHz and 3.5GHz, he said, but Intel is from a camp that says more is better. We're impatient but a government around the world is going to lead on this. Korea is already leading on WiMAX at 2.49GHz. It has allocated WiMAX spectrum already, he said.

Sean Maloney talked to Sally Pettipher, the head of development of the Science Museum archives, using a WiMAX connection and a phone using Skype. She said that the archive site is an old warehouse on an ex aerodrome and we needed to keep a track of the archives. People used to use pen and paper and drive a mile across the site and it was entirely antiquated. Networking the site would have cost a million pounds that we didn't have and Intel offered us a WiMAX solution, she said. Intel installed it for nothing, she added.

Maloney said there would be an option for WiMAX in laptops in 2006.

Sean Maloney shows the WiMAX kit off