The Hindu Business Line : Intel in talks with Indian cos for investing in WiMax services

New Delhi, May 30 Technology major Intel is in talks with Indian telecom players for making a strategic investment, including picking up equity stake, for rolling out WiMax services in the country.

The move is in line with Intel’s global strategy to push WiMax technology for high speed wireless broadband services. The company had earlier announced $600 million investment in US-based broadband company Clearlwire and another $500 million in Taiwan’s national WiMax project.

Speaking to Business Line, Mr R. Sivakumar, Managing Director (South Asia), Intel said, “We are ready to play any role in bringing WiMax to India. We are in talks with the Indian operators for a partnership including making a strategic investment. We believe that WiMax is best suited to drive India’s broadband growth story which in turn will benefit the economy at a macro level.”

Intel along with equipment vendors such as Motorola is betting huge on the success of WiMax in India. The Department of Telecom has also decided to provide financial support to telecom companies using any broadband wireless technologies, including WiMax, for rolling out Internet access in rural areas.

However, the Government is yet to formulate the policy for deploying this technology. There is a debate going on whether spectrum for wireless broadband should be priced lower than third generation mobile technologies or at similar levels.

While existing GSM players do not want differentiation between the two technologies, companies like Intel want a lower entry cost for WiMax.

“There should not be any comparison between 3G and WiMax. While 3G is essentially a voice based technology that also does data, WiMax is best suited for data at present. India is lagging way behind other countries in terms of broadband penetration and we believe that WiMax will enable much faster roll outs,” said Mr Sivakumar.

Mobile internet devices

Intel is also enabling the introduction of mobile internet devices that will be compatible to WiMax technology. For example devices based on its latest Atom processor will be launched later this year.

MIDs based on such chipsets will allow consumers to communicate, entertain, access information on Internet-based portable video players, navigation devices, converged tablets and other consumer products.

“As the Internet becomes more pervasive, the desire to be constantly connected via wireless broadband will continue to drive exciting new compute-intensive consumer products. Intel processors are designed for and already are the backbone for the majority of the computers that run and access the Internet,” said Mr Sivakumar.

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