3GSM / MWC : Intel and WiMAX

It’s good to see Intel being so outspoken about WiMAX and the mobile Internet this year. Their booth in the main hall has a lot of WiMAX demos and they have a working multi base station network deploayed in Barcelona for demos. Looking forward to test the network with some real devices on Thursday. At the Intel party last night I had the opportunity to talk to Chris Beardsmore of Intel with whom I will hold the WiMAX course at Oxford university later this year. He says that in the last 18 months, he’s been super busy flying to all those future WiMAX operators in Europe to discuss Intel’s plans for WiMAX with them. He told me that he finds it very statisfactory to see WiMAX growing up from infancy to the launches that are happening now. During the event, an Intel VP also showed the combined Wifi / WiMAX chip for notebooks. Good stuff, hope they’ll put that into lots of notebooks soon to create a critical mass.