MUMBAI: Paul S Otellini, President and COO of Intel Corp, and the future CEO, while delivering his keynote address to industry executives and users, said that one Wi-Fi access point is being deployed every three seconds, somewhere in the world.

Intel’s faith in the future of Wi-Fi can be gauged by Otellini’s statement that Wi-Fi will change the face of computing and would create a new generation of applications based on locational computing. As 27,000 new access points are being deployed everyday worldwide, which translates to one access point every three seconds, Otellini’s bullishness on wi-fi seemed to be justified.

Otellini said that they have plans to invest $300 million to build a wireless environment in terms of hot-spots, partnerships with service providers like hospitality chains and airlines, Wi-Fi applications, and Centrino promotion. Centrino on the notebook PC and Manitoba on the PDA are Intel’s technology pieces that enable wireless computing.

Continuing on the wireless front, Otellini re-iterated Intel’s commitment on deployment of the 802.11b standard, as well as deployment of the dual-band 802.11g, this coming summer.

Comparing to what Windows did for the desktops and Intel’s success in the PC chips, Otellini felt that Wi-Fi neither had any equivalent to Windows nor any killer app has been developed yet.

However, he also admitted that there do not seem to be any clear indications of the revival of the telecom sector, in the near future. At the same time, he dwelt at great length on how wireless computing is likely to be adopted very fast, especially by the enterprises.

In spite of all these plans, the current situation is that Intel is still a marginal or secondary player in the wireless space, and its wireless businesses are losing money on the whole. But Otellini refutes this by claiming that Intel has a very pervasive approach to computing, whereas its competitors in the wireless space are restricted in their ventures. "As we build upon the wi-fi technology and communication technology, we are getting better," added Otellini.

Talking about the future trends on enterprise computing, Otellini said that enterprises will do a lot of refreshing of their hardware, focus on wireless, and adopt Intel-based enterprise servers.

Intel itself is planning to buy 35,000 new PCs, mainly notebooks, and is making 80 of its 134 sites worldwide wireless-enabled, which will provide mobility to 20,000 of its employees. He also revealed that while in 2002, Intel won the volume game with 88 percent server market share, its revenue was still lower vis a vis RISC servers which had 12 percent market share. However, in 2003 this picture is likely to be reversed primarily because of greater and faster adoption of high-end Intel servers as compared to RISC servers.

Emphasizing the importance of India as a key partner for Intel, Otellini informed that India was Intel’s largest non-manufacturing site outside US, and that they plan to take their headcount in India from the existing 1100 to 3000 by the year 2005. Incidentally, Intel’s employee strength in India grew ten times in the last three years.

New investments are being proposed in India the areas of software development, hardware design, sales and marketing, as well as Intel Capital. Otellini, who said he was visiting India to educate himself, spent the first day of his 2 day India visit in internal meetings and key client meetings. He is scheduled for a meeting with SM Krishna, chief minister of Karnataka, in Bangalore today.