Anti-trust investigation against Intel

The US Federal Trade Commission is launching an anti-trust investigation into Intel, the chip manufacturing giant.

Intel said the FTC served a subpoena on the company last week, and it pledged to co-operate with the regulator to provide any required information, as it has since 2006, when the FTC began an informal inquiry.

"The company believes its business practices are well within US law," Intel said in its statement. "The evidence that this industry is fiercely competitive and working is compelling."

Prices for microprocessors declined by more than 42 percent between 2000 and 2007, Intel noted.

An FTC spokesman said he could confirm the investigation but couldn't give more details.

The FTC investigation comes a day after the Korea Fair Trade Commission fined Intel a reported 26 billion won (£13 million) for abusing its dominant position in the microprocessor market. Intel offered rebates to South Korean computer makers in a way that unfairly harmed its rival Advanced Micro Devices, the Korean agency said.

In January, New York state Attorney General Andrew Cuomo launched an antitrust investigation of Intel.

Japan and the European Commission have also investigated Intel, and AMD has a pending civil lawsuit against the company.

The Fair Trade Commission of Japan (JFTC) in 2005 recommended that Intel end its practice of offering funds to PC makers in exchange for a commitment not to use processors from its competitors. Intel accepted those recommendations, which came after a lengthy JFTC investigation, saying at the time it wanted to avoid a protracted legal battle.

The Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA), a trade group with AMD as a member, praised the FTC for opening the investigation.

The FTC investigation is "long due," said Ed Black, CCIA's president and CEO. After investigations by South Korea, Japan, and the European Commission, it was time for the US government to act, Black said.

Intel has a strong set of products, Black added. "They should not have to abuse their power and break the law in order to be successful," he added.

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Nationwide Wireless Network

Sprint Nextel, Clearwire, Google, Intel, Comcast, and Time Warner have all come together under the name of Clearwire, in an effort to produce a nationwide wireless network. The deal is estimated to be approximately 14.5 billion dollars. The investment by the five strategic investors will be based on a target price of $20.00 per share of Clearwire's common stock, subject to a post-closing adjustment. This adjustment is based upon the trading prices of new Clearwire common stock on the NASDAQ Market over 15 randomly selected trading days during the 30-trading day period ending on the 90th day after the closing date. The price per share will be based upon the volume weighted average price on such days and is subject to a cap of $23.00 per share and a floor of $17.00 per share. In addition, Trilogy Equity Partners, led by wireless veteran John Stanton, will invest directly in the new Clearwire's common stock.

The deal, which has been approved by the boards of all companies involved, is expected to close during the fourth quarter. The company will apply for a Nasdaq listing under the ticker "CLWR."
The new company is looking for a US network deployment reaching 120 million to 140 million people by the end of 2010. Company officials said they'll need up to $2.3 billion more in funding by getting additional investors or borrowing. They also could simply shrink the size of the network.
The network is predicted at being so fast that it will deliver video and advertising as well as text and simple Web pages.

Benjamin G. Wolff, chief executive officer of Clearwire, said, "The combination of robust next-generation mobile WiMAX technology and nationwide spectrum that we believe is optimal for delivering mobile broadband services - coupled with substantial new financial resources, a team of experienced wireless industry veterans, and distribution and technology agreements with some of our nation's leading communications, technology and content companies - creates what I believe to be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. "

In addition to its investment in the venture, Google will integrate many of its online services with Sprint’s forthcoming WiMAX networks. The Mountain View, California-based search engine will become Sprint’s default mobile search provider, and Google Maps Mobile and YouTube accessibility will be offered on all new Sprint handsets.

"This exciting new venture enables Time Warner Cable to help shape the next generation of wireless services in ways that will complement and enhance our products and services," said Glenn Britt, Time Warner Cable's president and chief executive officer. "We're committed to giving our customers more control over how and where they can easily connect to what's important to them - entertainment, information, and each other. The agreements we're announcing today are a financially prudent way for us to add mobility to our offerings when our customers demand it."

Mobile WiMAX is a standards-based wireless broadband technology designed to operate multiple times faster than today's 3G wireless networks. With embedded WiMAX chipsets in laptops, phones, PDAs, mobile Internet devices and consumer electronic equipment, mobile WiMAX technology is expected to allow users to wirelessly access a range of multimedia applications, such as live videoconferencing, recorded video, games, large data files and more - anywhere in the network coverage area.

Watch here the full story from Reporter Abby Prince.

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Wireless signals up to 100km

Intel’s researchers have come up with a way to send Wi-Fi signals up to 60 miles (100km), while maintaining a usable throughput of up to 6.5Mbits/s.

According to MIT’s Technology Review, the system is known as the 'rural connectivity platform' (RCP) for the way it can, at relatively low cost, connect towns to out-of-the-way locations otherwise bypassed by new communication technologies.

This is to be more than a lab engineer’s daydream and has been field tested in India, Panama, Vietnam and South Africa.

The technology is innovative on a number of levels. It works using a point-to-point design, which automatically lowers cost to a quoted region of $500-$1,000 (£250-£500) for a single connection – way below rival systems such as cable broadband or satellite.

Once terminated at the remote location, the connectivity it provides could be distributed using off-the-shelf Wi-Fi hardware.

It is also low-power, using around five to six watts for a system with three radios in a link, making it possible to power it during the day from solar power or by battery during the night.

A lot of this is down to clever re-engineering of the software used by conventional Wi-Fi hardware to keep data acknowledgements to a minimum. This also has benefits for bandwidth because it shaves back-channel chatter in favour of sending and receiving usable data.

"Applying a TDMA modification to the MAC layer of standard 802.11, Intel RCP is able to achieve connection distances of up to 100km unobstructed line-of-sight," says one of the researchers. "Additionally, the relay and fork modes of operation allow for more complex topologies. So even if there are mountains or rough terrain, the connection between the base station and the rural end point can be maintained."

The main limitation on the system looks as if it is the number of obstructions and the curvature of the earth, hence the 100km limit.

Intel has a video demonstration of the system on the Intel Research Berkeley lab website.

The RCP, while hugely attractive to locations without connectivity, nevertheless looks like a low-bandwidth connection. Higher bandwidths and lower latencies would still need custom-designed wireless systems such as WiMax.

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Intel's Silverthorne Chip Could Power Apple's Future

Intel's new Silverthorne chip is ideal for ultra-portable laptops like Apple, Inc.'s MacBook Air, but Intel may be laying the foundation for future Apple processors. Intel gave a hint of Apple's future in one of 14 papers it will present at the International Solid-State Circuit Conference in San Francisco.
Just because a paper is technical doesn't mean marketing wasn't involved. A good example is Intel's presentation Monday at the International Solid-State Circuit Conference in San Francisco on its upcoming Silverthorne mobile processor. The title: "A Sub-1W to 2W Low-Power IA Processor for Mobile Internet Devices in 45nm High-ÊMetal-Gate CMOS."
Sounds geeky, but consider the phrase "mobile Internet devices." That appears to align with Apple's vision of the iPhone and iPod Touch as "the first mainstream Wi-Fi mobile platform, running all kinds of mobile applications."
But while Silverthorne draws 10 to 15 times less power than Intel's Centrino laptop processor and is "easily the lowest-power laptop-style processor that Intel has produced," Charles King, principal analyst for Pund-IT, said in a telephone interview that the new chip is far better suited to ultra-portable laptop computers than handheld devices.

Air, Not iPhone

So for Apple, one of several manufacturers committed to adopting Silverthorne, think MacBook Air, not iPhone, King said.
Indeed, Intel is aiming the first version of Silverthorne at the ultra-portable market -- "potentially a very interesting market, but one that's still evolving," King said. "Hats off to Intel. It's a very interesting development, potentially very valuable" for the next generation of mobile devices.
The problem is that price and battery constraints have made ultra-portables of limited interest for most consumers. And while Silverthorne may dramatically reduce a laptop's power consumption, it's just part of the problem.
"Processor power consumption pales in comparison to display and hard-drive power consumption," King said. Silverthorne "is not a magic bullet," he added.

Foundation for Smartphones

That's not to say that Intel won't deliver smaller and more powerful versions. "Maybe Silverthorne is a step toward a hybrid device that would blend mobile-phone capabilities with tablet or laptop capabilities," King said.
Exactly the point, Intel says. Silverthorne is not just a chip for new laptops, it's an architecture that gets Intel on track to compete in the smartphone market.
"The low-power microarchitecture we're going to be rolling out next week is establishing a foundation that will spawn multiple processors in different segments," Pankaj Kedia, a director at Intel, told Computerworld. "We believe mobile Internet devices is a big market -- a high-growth market."
He added, "We think more and more consumers will want to carry the Internet with them in their pocket. Silverthorne will be the heartbeat of this category. From a growth perspective, Silverthorne is very important."
So Apple's interest in Silverthorne is intriguing. The iPhone, like other smart phones, uses an architecture from ARM. If the Silverthorne platform can eventually compete with that architecture, Intel may be able to get much more business from Apple.