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Intels announcement of its triband Wi-Fi client module wont have a significant effect on the wireless landscape, industry sources said. Meanwhile, the wireless fray will likely shift to the access point and to the next-generation 802.11n standard.
Santa Clara, Calif.-based Intel Corp. said Thursday that it has finally begun shipping a triband Wi-Fi chip set, more than a year after its competitors announced and began shipping their own products. The Intel PRO/Wireless 2915ABG 802.11a/b/g module will begin shipping in notebooks this September and throughout the remainder of the fourth quarter, Intel executives said.
Intel also arrived late to the 802.11b market but surrounded its products with a multimillion-dollar ad campaign based around its Centrino brand, which Intel has tied to its mobile processors as well as to its Wi-Fi efforts.
Intel also allowed OEMs to purchase a mobile processor, chip set and the Wi-Fi module all for a single price, providing a one-stop shop for the three components.
Likewise, Intels 802.11 a/b/g module will be escorted into the market by several software tools designed to make the Intel wireless experience better than that using rival chip sets.
Intels PROSet/Wireless Software Version 9.0, included with the module, will include a configuration wizard, advanced troubleshooting and features for automated security setup. The 2915ABG module and the PROSet software also support the most recent version of Cisco Compatible Extensions. A partnership formed last year with router manufacturer Linksys also will help users set up Centrino notebooks with Linksys routers.
“People would like Wi-Fi to just work, and thats the mission were in,” James A. Johnson, vice president of the Intel Communications Group and general manager of the wireless networking group within Intel, said during a webcast Thursday morning.
The merging of the 802.11a technology–to date, reserved more for businesses–with the consumer-oriented 802.11b/g technology likely wont have as much impact as Intels 802.11b/g module. The PRO/Wireless 2915ABG module, priced at $27 in lots of 10,000, will cost OEMs more than its 802.11b/g counterpart, and will serve a small niche.
For example, 802.11a/b/g routers make up only about 5 percent of the total Wi-Fi router market, said Morikazu Sano, vice president of product marketing at Buffalo Technology Inc. in Austin, Texas, primarily because an 802.11b router can be purchased for as little as $40 or $50, while triband routers cost $199 or more, he said.
“I can tell you that the 802.11a stuffs appeal has been pretty low,” said Ted Ladd, a spokesman for Poway, Calif.-based Gateway Inc. “Maybe this will pick up when Intel establishes the triband radio, but I dont know.”
OEMs say Intels advantage is its behind-the-scenes clout and its Centrino bundle, which allows OEMs a convenient one-stop shop for their purchasing. But being so late to market has allowed notebook makers to cozy up to Intels rivals for more than a year, offering the opportunity to upsell customers to the triband chip that Intel lacked.
Another weakness in Intels Centrino message is that it has promoted the general advantages of Wi-Fi and not the specific advantage of selecting an Intel chip, one OEM executive said.
“Wi-Fi is a standard, regardless of whose chip you use,” said Paul Morris, director of mobile product marketing at Fujitsu Computer Systems Corp., based in Sunnyvale, Calif. “If you walk into a hot spot and connect, its like walking into a pay phone and wondering whos handling the circuit switching–do you really care? The benefits of Centrino technology that Intel has communicated have been long battery life; theres been very little to do with wireless.”
Fujitsu will drop the triband Centrino module into its November notebook refresh, Morris said, while Gateway will offer the chip set before the end of the year, Gateways Ladd said.
Next Page: Examining the future of proprietary “turbo modes.”
Turbo Modes
Meanwhile, the controversial, proprietary “turbo modes” that Atheros and others have promoted may just work in their favor. Router makers, such as Buffalo, that have successfully tested and verified their products against the Centrino brand say Intel has been the tide that has lifted all boats.
Still, as Buffalos Sano noted, a customer who brings in a Centrino-equipped notebook to a café and connects to the companys Broadcom-equipped 125-Mbit AirStation 125 high-speed mode wireless cable/DSL router wont enjoy the kind of throughput than if he had a notebook containing Broadcom silicon. Faced with such a situation, the router would default to the slower throughput used by the Centrino. “Its just a limitation of the technology,” Sano said.
Thats good news for companies such as Atheros, who say theyve been written off time and again as new generations of Centrino products begin to come to market.
According to Colin Macnab, vice president of marketing and business development at Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Atheros, the companys Wi-Fi business has expanded in two successive quarters as gross margins have also increased, prompted by adoption of the turbo-mode “SuperG” standard in Asia. Intels communications business, meanwhile, has continually struggled.
“Before you drop Atheros from the discussion, please find me a PC OEM whos willing to hang their hat on nothing but Intel. Please stand up,” Macnab joked.
Even Dell Inc., which traditionally has been viewed as a staunch Intel partner, has been willing to distance itself from the Centrino fold. Like others, Dell has offered a base configuration that offers all three components of the Centrino platform –processor, chip set and Wi-Fi module–to benefit from Intels marketing subsidies.
But Dell has also offered its own Dell-branded Dell Wireless cards using Broadcom silicon. Dell spokeswoman Anne Camden said she did not know whether Dell would continue to offer the Dell Wireless Wi-Fi card line.
Tying Intels processors to its own Wi-Fi chip sets also leaves a number of Wi-Fi vendors to do deals with Advanced Micro Devices Inc., which is ramping its own low-power Athlon64 processors, Wi-Fi executives said.
With Intel and its rivals neck-and-neck in the Wi-Fi standards race, executives in the wireless industry said they expect the fight to go forward on two fronts: 802.11n, which will increase Wi-Fis bandwidth to more than 100 Mbits per second; and 802.11e QOS (quality-of-service) enhancements.
One wireless executive said this weeks agreement to bundle Vonages VOIP service with routers from Linksys and Netgear would have far-reaching implications.
“QOS has been something thats been talked about, but there hasnt been much meat on the bone,” he said. “If people start using VOIP, theyre going to want to be absolutely sure the calls are clear, especially with other [Internet] traffic on the line. QOS would seem to be a good differentiator.”
Intels Johnson said the company sits on the boards for each of the Wi-Fi standards bodies, and that it will include new capabilities as soon as standards are ratified.
At the Hot Chips conference at Stanford University, former Intel microprocessor executive and Dell Personal Systems Group PC chief Carl Everett said his team regularly conducts a 30-frames-per-second videoconference with his team in Bangalore, India. Everett, a partner at venture-capital firm Accel Partners in Palo Alto, Calif., said his firm uses dedicated Cisco QOS routers to facilitate the video stream.
Meanwhile, Macnab said a number of discussions still must be resolved surrounding 802.11n, which has already drawn battle lines in advance of the preliminary standards discussions that will be held in Berlin next month.
In this fight, Atheros and Intel are on the same side, part of the so-called TGn Sync group. To date, all of the public proposals use some array of multiple antennas, which stream parallel signals in a MIMO (multiple input, multiple output) approach for greater bandwidth.
“The question is which form of MIMO will win the battle,” Atheros Macnab said.
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