Wireless internet requires a user to be stationary while the whole idea of abolishing wires is to let man go further than an extension cord. Wireless Fidelity or Wi-fi allows an internet user to roam around the small confines of an office or a home and stay connected. But this is pacing the floor, not mobility. Internet on mobile phones is limited, too. The Net can’t follow where Hutch’s pug doesn’t go.
Intel and IIT-Madras say the answer lies in radio signals. If Intel succeeds, a passenger in a (prospective) train from Srinagar to Kanyakumari could stay connected to the Web throughout. Wherever there are radio signals, his laptop will find access to the Net. A team from IIT-Madras headed by Professor Ashok Jhunjhunwala, funded by a grant from Intel, is developing software that will digitise radio signals after they are picked up by a laptop’s smart antennae. Like phone lines, radio signals will link computers to the worldwide web. The software will further let a laptop switch automatically between various communication standards, a set of numbers that represent various wireless technologies like wi-fi and wi-max. For example, a laptop will switch automatically from accessing radio signals on city roads to using wi-fi in an enabled office space.
"This will do to internet what mobile phones did to telephony," says Ketan Sampat, president, Intel India. "There will be an exponential increase in user density." Some day, the chipmaker may want to say, "Intel outside".