Intel, Ibm In Wireless Venture

Intel, IBM , and other major computer and telecommunications companies will announce a venture to enable short-distance wireless communications between computing devices. The venture, led by semiconductor giant Intel, includes International Business Machines Corp, Toshiba Corp, Ericsson, and Nokia , who announced a consortium yesterday. Puma Technology Inc, a developer of software to synchronize handheld devices, is also attending. (Reuters)

Analysts said the companies will develop a specification, which is a road map for hardware and software developers, to make devices that will enable short-range communications between a wide variety of currently incompatible devices.

I think its the most important thing to happen to wireless in 20 years, said Andrew Seybold, editor and publisher of Andrew Seybolds Outlook, a newsletter on portable computing and communications, in Boulder Creek, California.

 

California-based Intel will develop a small, very low-cost semiconductor, that will fit in almost any device, analysts said. The project, code-named Blue Tooth, will let devices talk to each other, without wires, over about 40 feet.

Analysts said that with the plethora of diverse computing devices - from handheld computers like 3COM Corp.s PalmPilot, devices running Microsoft Corps Windows CE, to mobile phones, pagers, notebook computers most cannot share information.

The question is how will they all interact with each other, said Gerry Purdy, president of Mobile Insights, a California-based consulting firm. No one has stopped to create a technology so these devices can talk to each other.

This is soon going to be a big problem. Officials at Intel, Nokia, Toshiba, Puma and IBM declined to comment on what will be announced on Wednesday. Ericsson could not be reached for comment.

Analysts said the specifications are expected to lead to new products which could begin to be demonstrated as early as November at the COMDEX computer trade show and finished devices sometime in the fall of 1999. Communications will travel over a short-range radio frequency that does not need to be licensed.

Computer makers and appliance makers have been using infrared technology, which lets a user beam information from one device to another, but it has not been widely adopted because of its limitations.

You can wear your phone on your belt and the devices will talk to each other. Or I can have my notebook in my briefcase and my desktop can be talking to my notebook without ever having to take it out of the briefcase, said Seybold. Its going to be very widely adopted, very quickly, by 1999. It will become a de facto standard to be built in handheld devices.

(Therese Poletti, SF Bureau, 415/677-2542))