Intel: Wi-Max Laptop Cards by Year End

Intel said Tuesday that its planned release of Wi-Max compatible cards had been moved up to this year. The technology is widely expected to replace Wi-Fi in many situations such as cities when it sees wide-scale release later this year and in 2007.

Wi-Max has a much longer range than Wi-Fi, varying from a few miles in urbanized areas to as much as 10 miles in open country. The technology could be used to build out wireless networks in a much easier fashion than the current mesh technologies being used by EarthLink in its municipal Wi-Fi deployments.

Helping to bring Wi-Max out faster is decreasing costs, with increasing adoption worldwide, said Intel's mobility group vice president Sean Maloney. The company originally had planned to release Wi-Max products in 2007.

Successful pilots of Wi-Max are ongoing in Spain and India, and it is believed the technology could come in handy in developing nations where Internet access is still an expensive proposition.

Maloney said that, eventually, Wi-Fi and Wi-Max would merge over the next several years and the company is working on a chip that would combine the two technologies, code-named "Ofer."

"Emerging applications such as mashups, blogs, podcasts and RSS make the Internet an even more personal and interactive experience, and people want to carry those experiences with them," Maloney told attendees of the Intel Developer Forum. "The next stage of Internet growth is to make this 'real Internet' mobile."