Bangalore to go WiMAX in 2007

Sufia Tippu
Wednesday, 11 October 2006 19:23

IT Industry - Market

“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.

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.