Intel launches Wi-Fi brokering service
Tuesday, 6 April 2004 16:30 EST



Intel, unhappy with the fragmented nature of the wireless Internet market, has brokered the launch of a new company - RoamPoint - which aims to bring GSM-style roaming to Wi-Fi hotspots. The typical notebook user will never see the name RoamPoint, said Andy Greenhalgh, Intel's marketing director for mobile solutions in Europe. Instead, it will be an invisible payment broker for all Wi-Fi and mobile phone providers. "It's been a lot of work, but today's announcement with RoamPoint is a breakthrough - a brokering service, which will let the industry get away from multiple bilateral roaming agreements, to the traditional GSM centric roaming model," said Greenhalgh.

Intel's corporate vision of wireless simply didn't match what was going on in the market, he said. "One of the key issues is single sign on, single bill. We want to log in, enter ID and password and find that 'it just works' - we don't want to have to know our way around networking protocols, and creating new subscriptions every time," he told the WLAN Event keynote audience today.

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