The Open Patent Alliance Is Formed

As we told you before, Intel is placing significant importance on the development of WiMAX on a global scale. As part of the company's commitment to offer users a worldwide spread WiMAX network, Intel has recently announced that it will partner with a number of other major companies in order to accelerate widespread adoption and deployment of WiMAX technology and products. The partnership between these major companies will go by the name of the Open Patent Alliance.

The members of OPA, besides Intel, are as follows: Alcatel-Lucent, Cisco, Clearwire, Samsung Electronics and Sprint. These companies, along with Intel, are going to advance a competitive and open intellectual property rights model, in order to make way for a larger WiMAX industry that supports innovation through broader choice and lower equipment and service costs for WiMAX technology, devices and applications globally.

WiMAX is basically a 4G, IP-based broadband wireless technology that provides low-cost, multi-megabit speed and greater throughput for the mobile Internet era - an era in which video-rich content and bandwidth-intensive applications can be found on a universal scale.

"Intel's vision in driving the formation of the Open Patent Alliance is to bring the openness of the Internet and computing industries to the wireless industry and WiMAX," said Sriram Viswanathan, vice president, Intel Capital and general manager, Intel 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." he concluded by saying.

At this moment, there are a limited number of areas where the WiMAX technology is enabled. Developed countries such as US or Taiwan are trying to implement a strong built WiMAX network. To accomplish that, they are turning to major companies such as Intel to provide the required technology and support.