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Date: Thursday, September 18, 2003
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SAN JOSE, California --Intel Developer Forum is a utopia of wireless connectivity. Many of the estimated 4,000 developers, industry analysts, software companies and IT press sit on bean bags or lounges in the cavernous San Jose McEnery convention center surfing the web freely and wirelessly.

The nearby San Jose Marriott hotel also pulses with Wi-Fi activity as guests and traveling businesspeople walk around with their notebooks checking last minute e-mail or selecting travel options. This is a microcosm of the ideal wireless world that Intel as well as Wi-Fi evangelists are trying to proliferate. News from the IDF is, wireless is a fast evolving segment specially if one considers that notebook computers are fast outselling desktop models.

During his keynote address, Intel's president and COO Paul Otellini lauded the steady migration towards Wi-Fi and wireless technologies an area that Intel and its partners are developing products for.

" The addition of more than 76,000 wireless networking cards a day to the world's computing infrastructure makes it clear that convergence is here to stay. And this isn't just happening in the PC area -- we're estimating by 2010 there will be more than 2.5 billion wireless handheld devices capable of providing communications functions combined with the processing power of today's advanced PCs."

Intel's cornerstone in its bid for wireless computing adaptation is the widely popular Centrino processor. Launched in March of this year, Centrino was the first processor designed from the ground up with wireless and mobile users in mind. Its high performance and lower-power consumption rate coupled with in-chip support for wireless technologies has made it even more popular than Intel's Pentium 4 desktop chip, certainly a sign of things to come.

A year ago, Intel targeted the establishment of 10,000 Wi-Fi hotspots around the world to push the wireless initiative, to date over 20,000 hotspots have been erected according to Intel sources.

Otellini also explained that while dramatic inroads were being made in the wireless connectivity area, a lot of development has gone into security and encryption protocols that would ensure safer Wi-Fi communications standards in the future.

Computer security, which is a growing trend even with wired networks, poses new challenges and paradigms in the wireless space that still need to be addressed. On a similar note, Intel also unveiled future technologies such as wireless or Wi-Fi capabilities built into processors (disregarding external access point cards) as well as an advanced system that can keep notebooks connected to networks by intelligently scanning and selecting to and from Wi-Fi hotspots, GPRS phone signals and other forms of wireless access.

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