Despite past failures, Intel continues to explore every angle to win itself a significant role in the wireless market. The growing trend for WiFi-first services is a logical one for the chip giant to support – the firm has been a driver of public WiFi’s success ever since it launched Centrino in 2003, and it has always supported the open web model against the closed 3GPP one. And the cablecos and MVNOs which are pushing WiFi-first most aggressively would be easier customers to target than the MNOs with their entrenched supply chains. So the announcement that it is taking a stake in pioneering US WiFi-first MVNO FreedomPop comes as no surprise, and could be the blueprint for bigger partnerships in…