Manufacturers and service providers looked at the emerging WiMax wireless technology this week and saw a possible rival to wired broadband services - at the end of what some see as a long standardization process.

"We believe that WiMax can happen, and be widely deployed, and be a big deal in the next three years the same way Wi-Fi has been a big deal the last two years," said Sean Maloney, executive vice president and general manager of Intel's communications group, in a keynote address at the Wireless Communications Association (WCA) International Technical Symposium & Business Expo in San Jose.

The conference focused on wireless broadband technology, in particular WiMax, which is based on the IEEE 802.16 family of standards. The WiMax Forum, a group of vendors and service providers, initially will certify products based on the 802.16d standard, designed for wireless base stations with a range as long as 50 kilometers. It is a point-to-multipoint technology, so it doesn't require a direct line of sight to the customer. A later version of the standard, 802.16e, will provide a relatively simple upgrade to access points to support mobile customers, according to François Draper, vice president of sales and marketing at Wavesat Inc., in Dorval, Quebec, and chairman of memberships at the WiMax Forum.

A single base station could transmit hundreds of megabits per second of data, but the standard doesn't define how much of that capacity a service provider should give an individual customer, Draper said. Carriers typically would offer 2M bit/sec or more to a small or midsized business, and 300K bit/sec to 400K bit/sec to consumers, he said.

Intel, which plans to make WiMax chips, expects the technology to hit the market next year for stationary broadband connectivity to businesses and homes and backhaul from Wi-Fi hot spots, Maloney said. Testing has shown such a technology can support the kinds of services associated with today's DSL and cable modem services, including video, to homes and businesses in dense urban areas. Chips for WiMax products will start hitting the market this year, according to Guy Côté, director of international sales at Wavesat. The fabless semiconductor company aims to offer sample quantities of a chip in May and ship in volume by year-end.

The IDG News Service is a Network World affiliate.

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