Daniel Sorid

SAN JOSE: Telecommunications carriers from six countries including Britain and India are assessing a new method for distributing wireless high-speed Internet access over long distances, an Intel Corp. executive said on Wednesday.

The technology, known as WiMAX, could bring the Internet to millions of houses and business unserved by cable and copper-wire, or DSL, service, especially in the developing world, its proponents say. Intel plans to release a microchip for use in WiMAX equipment in the second half of the year.

Speaking at the Wireless Communications Association annual conference here, Intel Executive Vice President, Shawn Maloney said he expected some skepticism about the chip maker's ability to promote a new broadband service, an area generally outside its purview as a computer chip company.

However, he pointed to several telecommunications carriers assessing WiMAX for trials -- BT and UK Broadband of the United Kingdom, Iberbanda of Spain, MVS Net of Mexico, Neotec of Brazil, PCCW of Hong Kong, and Reliance Infocomm of India -- as proof that momentum was building.

While no carriers in the United States were listed as participating, Maloney said service providers around the world were expressing interest in the potential of WiMAX, possibly as a supplement to existing broadband services. Technical hurdles remain, but no show-stoppers, he said.

"We don't see any problems that can't be solved by a bunch of smart engineers over a period of time," Maloney said.

A WIRELESS PANORAMA

Intel is promoting WiMAX as a fix for one of Internet service providers' biggest problems: how to get fast Internet access into homes and businesses without tearing up roads and sidewalks everywhere and laying down fiber-optic cable.

The technology can blanket a 30-mile area with the capability of transmitting data at 70-megabits per second.

Intel envisions the deployment of WiMAX using outdoor antennas that can bring the signal to the front doors of homes and offices. From there, a router would pick up the WiMAX signal and deliver Internet connections to computers.

Eventually, computers and mobile devices themselves would connect directly to a WiMAX signal.

WiMAX, however, is in its early stages, and is one of several competing broadband wireless solutions offered by major technology companies.

Cellular companies, for instance, also see emerging markets like India and Latin America as fertile ground for data as well as voice services. Qualcomm Inc., which licenses and designs products based on CDMA technology, has touted the reach of new high-speed cellular networks in places like Indonesia and India as keys to the development of those economies.

Others have promoted ways to extend Wi-Fi, a short range wireless technology popular in homes and public places like the airports and coffee shops, to large swaths of areas.

Intel has spent hundreds of millions of dollars promoting Wi-Fi and helping the technology become an inexpensive way to connect to the Web at public places like coffee houses. But Wi-Fi, Maloney said, is not properly set up for long-distance use, either technically or economically.

"We felt that wasn't what the protocol was designed for, and also the service provider community wouldn't accept it in terms of revenue," he said.

Down the road, Maloney said microchips that bridge the various wireless technologies might eventually appear in portable phones and handheld computers.

"Over a period of time you can look at how you can merge them," Maloney said. "For the foreseeable future, they're separate."

© Reuters