Bangalore got to Wimax

Bangalore is rocking. Two things happened simultaneously on the same day. Both based on WiMAX technology, one of which means the Indian state will be WiMAX enabled within months.
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At the two-day Intel Developer Forum, Intel revealed its WiMAX roadmap, with the launch of its first WiMAX compliant chip — Rosedale 2, which offers support for dynamic switching between fixed WiMAX and mobile WiMAX.

On the same day, the new Karnataka State IT and Biotechnology Minister, M.N.Vidyashankar, went on record to say that Bangalore would be completely WiMAX-enabled from January 2007.

At the developer conference, Intel extolled the contribution of Indian engineers at the India R&D centre, the largest for Intel outside the US.

“The Bangalore centre has played a significant role in the development of Santa Rosa, our fourth generation of mobile platform set to be launched in January 2007,” said Shmuel (Mooly) Eden, senior vice-president and general manager, Intel’s Mobility Group.

Bangalore was also becoming an important centre for future development of its ultra mobile (more portable/lighter) computers and “We expect a large portion of development work in server processors to be driven out of India,” he said.

Earlier, delivering the keynote address to a packed audience of developers, Patrick Gelsinger, senior vice-president (digital enterprise group), Intel Corp, said the India R&D Centre has already contributed to the server processor line and the centre would continue to play a critical role in future technology development.
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and then the “Server processors are also being designed at the Bangalore centre. Work on Woodcrest (5100), Clovertown (2300) and Tulsa (7100) chips is happening in the city,” said Patrick Gelsinger, senior vice-president, general manager, digital enterprise group, Intel Corp.
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Meanwhile, Intel is also acting as an advisor to the Karnataka Government on the “Unwired Bangalore” project.

On the other hand, the IT and BT secretary Vidyashankar, is putting in place a massive plan of getting Bangalore unwired.

“The WiMAX initiative will cover a radius of 20 km from the center of the city. This is an enormous challenge and we are expecting this to be in place by early next year,” he added.

Incidentally, a couple of years ago, there was a plan to wi-fi the entire city but the whole plan did not take off.

“But this time, we have got five requests for proposals (RFPs) and we hope by January 2007, the whole project should be live,” Vidyashankar added.

Vidyashankar is credited with having made an entire government department ( Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board) paperless - mammoth task, especially when comes to government offices.

This project won the prestigious Special Achievement in GIS (SAG) International award for its outstanding accomplishment in GIS and its applications. The award is instituted by the Environmental Systems Research Institute(ESRI) California, US.