Intel's Project Blue brings WiMAX to affordable computing: Made for India

BANGALORE, INDIA: In his keynote at Computex 2009 at Taipei today, Sean Maloney, Executive Vice President and Chief Sales and Marketing Officer, Intel Corp. discussed the ambitious efforts called Project Blue undertaken by Intel to bridge the digital divide.

Through this program Intel is addressing the digital divide problem with the help of affordable computing and broadband combined with the various usages of the Internet which create strong desirability to own a PC.

"This is a very exciting time for India," said R. Sivakumar, MD, sales and marketing, Intel South Asia. "We believe Intel’s Project Blue is going to help us end the digital divide in India by increasing PC penetration in the country ten-fold by 2012. The initiatives we are introducing offer compelling and unique value propositions for our customers in India."

Connectivity in India
In May 2008 at the World Congress of IT at Kuala Lumpur, the government laid out a bold vision of 500 million Internet users, (a ten-fold growth from current 49 million users), 100 million broadband connections (a thirty-fold growth from current 3.6 million) and 100 million connected devices all by 2012. Referred to as the 511 vision, it has today led to national consensus that broadband penetration will be the next big driver of economic growth.

Despite all this, today we have a 2 percent broadband and a 3 percent PC penetration rate across households in India. Project Blue is an effort to address this in a manner which resolves issues of both cost and connectivity.

Project Blue: 10x PC penetration by 2012
Under the aegis of Project Blue, Intel India is undertaking a number of efforts to bridge the digital divide.

To address these issues, Intel is developing Internet centric computing devices: Nettops that are WiMAX enabled. Integrating WiMAX connectivity into Nettops makes not only access affordable but also makes them easy to use and to deploy.

At Computex today, Intel showcased concepts from HCL Infosystems of nettops integrated with WiMAX, designed specifically for first-time PC users in markets like India.

HCL Infosystems' chairman Ajai Choudhary, said: “We are pleased to work with Intel to bring these solutions to the Indian market. The WiMax–enabled nettops from HCL Infosystems, based on the Intel Atom processor will provide the next billion users in India with their first experience of computing and the Internet and we look forward to supporting all efforts in bridging the digital divide.”

Intel expects these nettops to be available in India from OEMs in the second half of 2009 at very attractive price points. Additional information on specific devices will be announced in the coming months.