Gordon Lindsay, European product manager for Broadcom's wireless devices division, gives his view of the market potential for WiMAX, WiFi and UWB technologies 

EW: Will VoIP over WiFi phones become an alternative to mobile phones?
Gordon Lindsay: Broadcom does not see Wi-Fi phones replacing cellular phones. They are a more a feature-rich and portable replacement for the cordless phone found in homes today. Wi-Fi phones provide limited mobility, as users still need a hot-spot for connectivity compared to the ubiquitous coverage for cellular. However, Wi-Fi phones are great for web based services such as email, video, location and presence. First generation dual-mode cellular phones, meaning phones with both cellular and Wi-Fi technology, have just started to emerge from tier one manufacturers; it will be interesting to see how users react to them.

EW: Does WiMAX have a future? If so, where?
Gordon Lindsay: WiMAX has generated a lot interest and is being evaluated by the industry, Broadcom included. There are other communications technologies such as 3G and 4G cellular that offer very similar benefits and which have the advantage of being built on existing cellular infrastructure. Broadcom is monitoring the development of WiMAX and the business cases supporting it, as well as continually checking the interest of our customers, which to date has not justified a major commitment to the technology.

EW: Does MIMO-enhanced WiFi add anything meaningful to the consumer compared to 802.11g? If so, what? 
Gordon Lindsay: MIMO-enhanced Wi-Fi (or 802.11n) will provide very meaningful improvements in both range and throughput for wireless LAN consumers. Broadcom’s Intensi-fi products are now demonstrating wireless throughput of greater than 160 Mb/s in real-world environments, which represents a five times increase compared to 802.11g products. 802.11n will allow consumers to wirelessly transmit multiple streams of high definition video content around their homes.

EW: Does UWB have any practical uses?
Gordon Lindsay: UWB will basically serve as a high-speed PAN cable replacement or the broadband version of Bluetooth. Bluetooth is perfect for applications such as wireless headsets, keyboards and mice. However, in situations where you want to transmit a lot of data over a short distance and in a short period of time, UWB kicks-in. For example, if you have a Gigabyte of photos or perhaps a movie on your mobile phone, it would take some time for standard Bluetooth to move them over to your computer (BT with Enhanced Data Rate (EDR) works at around 3Mb/s).  UWB will work at greater than 400Mb/s, which would make short work of that one GB archive.

EW: Is FTTH going to be a significant (i.e. $1bn+) market for chips anytime soon?
Gordon Lindsay: We do not believe FTTH will be a $1bn SoC market anytime soon. A substantial amount of infrastructure and network architecture investment is required by carriers to move fiber-to-the-home, making the overall deployment and market penetration slower than other potential approaches. While we see this service as very compelling in the future and several major carriers are actively assessing FTTH, the SoC market opportunity remains below $1bn in the near term.

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