BellSouth brings you Wireless Broadband Internet, wherever you are

BellSouth Corp, one of the largest telecommunications groups in the United States, has announced on Monday its intention to launch a broadband wireless Internet service for residential customers. This new service is based on WiMax technology, an emerging wireless data transfer standard, backed up by Intel and some of the largest telephony companies.

Even though the WiMax radio standard is not yet approved, it's expected to provide the users with access to high speed Internet services on wide areas, and all from a single cell site. The standard should offer a less expensive alternative for connecting users in remote locations, which cannot be easily reached through classical means. The fact that Intel is promoting WiMax proved to be a great advantage, since almost 240 technology companies already formed a group developing technologies and applications compatible to it.

The WiMax certified equipments are yet to be released on the market, but several companies are already selling "pre-WiMax" equipments, based on earlier versions of the standard. Even if it's considered to be a next generation 4G wireless technology, WiMax is most likely be used as an alternative to fixed, rather than mobile networks.

Intel, the world's most important chip manufacturer, considers this standard a very good opportunity to expand onto the broadband wireless chips market, hence the support it provides for its protégé.