SAN FRANCISCO: Six global technology companies said Monday that they had formed an alliance to pool patents in a bid to encourage the expansion of WiMax, an emerging high-speed wireless technology.
Cisco Systems, Intel, Alcatel-Lucent, Samsung Electronics, Sprint Nextel and Clearwire said they hoped the alliance would help companies designing products that use WiMax get access to licenses to patented technology at a predictable cost.
"It's about openness, predictability of the business model," said Scott Richardson, an executive with Clearwire.
Sriram Viswanathan, general manager of Intel Capital, said the agreement brought "a mechanism to keep the royalty rates low. It brings transparency."
Backers of WiMax want makers of consumer electronics to build printers, music players, digital cameras and other gadgets that will connect to the Internet using the new standard, executives said during a conference call. The failure of existing mobile phone technology to break into this area is partly the result of the cost of licensing the patents, Viswanathan said.
Fujitsu, a Japanese electronics company that also makes chips for WiMax technology, is not part of the alliance.
WiMax promises to blanket entire cities with Web access for laptops, cellphones and other wireless devices at speeds up to five times faster than traditional wireless networks, the technology is still largely unproven. Wi-Fi, by contrast, is a short-range service that covers small areas like coffee shops.
Laptops and mobile phones using WiMax would be able to transmit data up to five times faster than current technology allows. Intel, the world's largest chip maker, is investing in it to create higher speed connections that would give consumers and business users a reason to upgrade their laptop computers.
Other backers of the technology include Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Google, which invested in a joint venture with Clearwire and Sprint.
In May, Sprint and Clearwire said they would combine their high-speed wireless businesses to create a $14.5 billion spanning much of the United States.
From : http://www.iht.com/
