Ramping up
Fresh from investing a billion US dollars in WiMAX company Clearwire, Intel has announced it is to be part of a the new Open Patent Alliance (OPA), which it’s claimed exists to stimulate the development of the WiMAX industry worldwide.
“The OPA will advance a competitive and open intellectual property rights model,” said the press release, “thus stimulating a larger WiMAX industry that supports innovation through broader choice and lower equipment and service costs for WiMAX technology, devices and applications globally."
Alcatel-Lucent, Cisco, Clearwire, Intel, Samsung and Sprint will club together to form a patent pool to make it easier for participating companies to obtain the relevant patent licences from their owners.
It is also intended to function as a general community, consisting of the six founding members and up to nine others that have yet to be determined, which will serve as a central resource for WiMAX intellectual property rights topics.
Given that these future new members are intended to represent a broad geographical spread, there are some grounds for optimism that Europe might get involved in WiMAX, which is based on the IEEE 802.16e and is also referred to as 4G.
“Intel's vision in driving the formation of the OPA is to bring the openness of the Internet and computing industries to the wireless industry and WiMAX,” said Sriram Viswanathan, VP of Intel Capital and general manager of Intel’s WiMAX program office. “By facilitating an open intellectual property rights model, we expect the alliance to in turn create a more competitive, innovative and broader WiMAX industry that ultimately benefits the consumer with more choice for WiMAX technology and services.”
Press release: Open Patent Alliance Formed to Advance WiMAX 4G Technology
