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Chip maker Intel has finally got its mobile WiMAX technology strategy on track with plans to have the technology included in laptop chipsets by the middle of next year.
Opening Intel's annual developer forum in San Francisco yesterday, chief executive Paul Otellini said he expected 1.3 billion people to be in range of WiMAX wireless broadband networks by 2012, up from 750 million in 2010 and 150 million next year.
Intel would seek to build WiMAX chips into laptops and mobile devices in the same way it has done with Wi-Fi chips.
"WiMAX from our perspective is the network most of these things will be connected on," said Otellini.
By the middle of next year Intel will release "Montevina", its updated Centrino laptop chipset. It will accommodate both Wi-Fi networking and WiMAX, which extends wireless broadband access across larger distances and at greater data transfer speeds.
Computer-makers Lenovo, Acer, Asus, Panasonic and Toshiba will embed WiMAX in their laptops, though computer giants Dell and HP are conspicuously absent from the line-up.
Technology analyst Jack Gold said that was down to the most mainstream of computer brands hedging their bets until WiMAX gained more traction.
"These guys are not sure which path to go down. It costs them to put it in their machines and they're getting pressure from vendors to put 3G in laptops," he said.
But Gold saw the support from the existing hardware vendors as significant.
"Why did Wi-Fi take off? It didn't go big until Intel put a chip in every device," he said.
"WiMAX is less expensive than cellular infrastructure to roll out. If you've got the licence you can put up a tower for reasonable money."
Firm news from Intel on WiMAX is a boost for internet provider CallPlus, which plans to roll out a WiMAX network here and has delayed doing so because of the uncertain timeframe for the delivery of mobile WiMAX-capable devices.
"We have no qualms about the technology being able to provide a service as reliable as the good old [telephone] network, and bandwidth can be superior to DSL depending on the amount of spectrum allocated," said CallPlus founder Malcolm Dick.
While CallPlus has operated a small network in Whangarei using fixed WiMax technology that requires users to connect their computers to a WiMax unit and antenna, Dick said CallPlus would be using the mobile WiMax technology built into the laptops Intel is supporting.
"The reason for this is the evolution of multiple radios which increase the bandwidth in a given spectrum range, and of course the seamless handover between base stations, which adds another level of reliability to fixed networks," he said.
"All the R&D is in this space and new standards such as 802.16J, which allows the range to be extended by using one base station as a relay to the main base station, means that coverage will continue to get even better."
Intel said it would form a joint venture with Japanese mobile operator KDDI to bid for a licence to run a WiMAX network in Japan.
Like New Zealand, Japan is selling radio spectrum in the 2.5GHz band which is likely to attract fierce bidding between established mobile players and new entrants betting on WiMAX.
CallPlus has secured up to US$450 million ($616 million) in funding from a Japanese investment bank to fund its WiMAX network, but some of the funding would be spent on fixed-line infrastructure as well.
Dick said CallPlus' finance arrangements are not tied to a specific vendor or technology. "Our deployment will almost certainly be a mixture of [local loop unbundling], WiMax and fibre as access technologies, and will be established in a special-purpose access technologies company which will then wholesale the service to CallPlus, Slingshot and other interested parties."
