Interview with Sriram Viswanathan, General Manger for WiMAX at Intel

We recently sat down with Sriram Viswanathan, General Manger for the WiMAX Program office at Intel to discuss WiMAX, the upcoming Intel roadmap for 2008 and the overall state of the industry.

Driven by the explosive growth of mobile phones and increased demand for new social networks and other personal internet applications, the broadband penetration model has changed dramatically.

"We are clearly seeing a fundamental shift in our business," says Viswanathan.   "There was a time when we were pushing one computer per home.  When Andy Grove stood up at Comdex 15 years ago, the key message was a billion computers for a billion homes.  Now people are really associating computing with the individual - personal broadband."

It is not surprising then that global shipments of laptops are expected to surpass desktops in the near future.  "We are seeing in our business where the mix of laptops is growing dramatically," says Viswanathan.  "It would not be unrealistic to expect in the next 3-4 years to see north of 300M notebooks per year.  In all geographical areas, the laptop is expected to be the dominant form factor."

This growth is also being fueled by new, cheaper and smaller form-factor devices such as those announced by Asus and others at CES earlier this year.  "Computing is getting re-defined with everyone wanting individual form-factor devices that they can take the internet with them," says Viswanathan.  "The internet is becoming more personal."

Clearly a key driver in the growth of these devices has been the ubiquitous availability of multi-megabit broadband connections.  It's difficult now to imagine traveling and not being able to find Wi-Fi at an airport, hotel or other hotspot.  But what happens when you are out of the limited range of the Wi-Fi router?  Until now, the only choice has been one of the slower 3G data-rate options offered by cellular carriers.

"Our belief is that the key driver of these mobile platforms is the type of broadband connections that exist," says Viswanathan.  "If you look at all the categories, the data rich applications are the ones that are driving the most usage."

If fact, a recent posting on TechCrunch reported that the data usage of the iPhone in the US is driving 70% of all data usage on all these types networks. "If you believe that video is what is driving the data usage on the internet and the Iphone is an indication of what is to come, you have to believe that you need a better network," says Viswanathan.  "The current infrastructure is just not capable of delivering this experience.  WiMAX will deliver a minimum of 3x performance over the existing 3G technologies."

WiMAX, however, is not without its detractors.  Some in the industry have criticized WiMAX for taking longer to develop and ultimately to be of little use with other upcoming technologies such as LTE -- the effort to upgrade the UMTS standard to a 4G standard.  Although the LTE standard is yet to be defined, it is believed that it will share many of the same characteristics with WiMAX.

"WiMAX today is what LTE will be 3-4 years from now," says Viswanathan.  From a performance standpoint, there is not much difference.  But the reality of the business case is about when it is available and WiMAX is available today.  As with any new technology, there is a 3 year window from when the standards get establish to when commercial networks launch.  This is consistent with when the mobile WiMAX standard (802.16e) which was established in 2005 and we are now seeing commercial networks being deployed in 2008."

Regardless of the technology used, a dominant factor in the success of any wireless network is the access to spectrum.   Much has been written about the recent 700Mhz auction in the US in which $15B of the $19B was won by Verizon and AT&T.

"The 700Mhz could not have happened at a better time because it brings to focus all the issues that WiMAX stands for - openness, flat IP network that brings the internet together," says Viswanathan.  "If you study the available spectrum that exists across all the carriers in the US, Sprint and Clearwire together have in excess of 130Mhz of 2.5Ghz spectrum.  AT&T and Verizon's spectrum positions together, even if you include their AWS positions and 1.9 and 800Mhz, will be less than 50% of the free spectrum that is owned by Sprint & Clearwire."

"Even more profound is that their spectrum is populated with existing users," says Viswanathan.  So if you want to deliver broadband, you don't have free spectrum.  If you want to use it, you have to acquire or move existing users to a different band.  In the end, the delivery of mobile broadband in the US is going to be fought and won based on spectrum positions."

As the networks begin to be built out, Intel has been busy getting ready to launch  several platforms by mid-year that will feature WiMAX capabilities.  Montevina, the code name for the next generation platform for notebooks, will be branded Centrino 2 and will feature the new Intel Core 2 Duo 45nm processor, a chipset and a wireless component, which includes an optional integrated Wi-Fi/WiMAX module. 

Other platforms include Menlow which is designed for smaller, form factor devices known as MIDs (mobile internet devices) that will allow you to take the "internet in your pocket."

"Both of these categories will be WiMAX ready," says Viswanathan.  "Connectivity will be market by market, but these devices will be WiMAX ready, much like what we did with Wi-Fi on the Centrino platform."

If the adoption of Wi-Fi over the past few years is any guide, then WiMAX should do very well.  "Just as Wi-Fi attach rates improved over a 2-year period, we expect WiMAX to do the same," says Viswanathan.  "We are actually putting Wi-Fi and WiMAX in a single module from a space perspective. You will use Wi-Fi and then use WiMAX as is comes available.  But over time, as WiMAX becomes available you will be able to use that as your primary network." 

Sriram Viswanathan
Vice President, Intel Capital
Director, Mobility Sector
General Manager, WiMAX Program Office
INTEL CORPORATION

Sriram Viswanathan is managing director of Intel Capital and general manager of the WiMAX program office.  As the head of the mobility sector, Viswanathan is responsible for investments on a worldwide basis in the mobile area.  He is also responsible for the mobile content and services sector, mobile communications sector and mobile platforms sector.  In January 2007 he also assumed responsibility for leading Intel's WiMAX efforts, acting as the corporate focal point for our customers and business partners in this strategic effort for Intel.

Sunday, March 30, 2008 in Applications | Business  | Permalink |  Comments (1)