Barrett touts open standards for telecom industry
infoworld.com
HONG KONG -- Intel President and CEO Craig Barrett used his Tuesday keynote address here at Telecom Asia 2000 to urge the telecommunications industry to adopt open standards and an IP-based core for next-generation converged voice and data networks.
Barrett suggested that open standards offer a solution to the telecommunications industry's biggest dilemma -- that traffic volumes and costs are rising faster than revenue, Barrett said. The success of the computing industry in reducing costs and speeding up innovation was based on the move to open standards -- a model that the telecommunications industry, which is suffering from its historical preference for closed, proprietary technologies, must also adopt to cope with the convergence wave.
In a question and answer session with reporters following his speech, Barrett pointed to specific efforts such as the Internet Exchange Architecture that Intel has developed to allow network equipment makers to lower the cost of their switches, routers, and other network devices by being able to design their products around a common standard.
Intel, of course, wants to provide "the building blocks," mainly in the form of semiconductors, to network equipment manufacturers, such as Cisco, that will supply the infrastructure for open standards-based networks, Barrett said.
In related news, Barrett also announced that Intel has more than doubled the size of the Intel Communications Fund from $200 million to $500 million, to add support for investments to be made in wireless start-ups. The fund, which is managed by Intel Capital, will invest in companies that are enabling technologies complementary to Intel's own products and technologies, he added.
Specifically, Intel will open the coffers to companies developing devices and applications based on Intel's XScale processors and the recently unveiled Personal Internet Client Architecture for handheld wireless devices.
While only a limited amount of the fund's original $200 million found its way to Asia, Barrett said that it is likely that more investment now will end up in the region. |
