Standards Group's Next Action Set To Unleash Mobile WiMax Engineers' Blessing Key Step OK would spark the release of wares used to build more powerful wireless networks.(INTERNET & TECHNOLOGY)

Byline: JAMES DETAR

All aboard! Wireless broadband is about to roll out of the station.

Digital subscriber line and cable modem services provide about 40% of U.S. households with broadband -- fast -- Internet access. But users have to tether to phone wires or cable lines. And Wi-Fi gives people wireless Web links in many locales, for users within 300 feet of the Wi-Fi transmitting gear, or node.

Now, regulators are about to OK a standard that would give people mobile broadband wireless. The technology is the mobile version of the worldwide interoperability for microwave access standard, better known as WiMax. Besides making life easier for Internet users, it has a chance to deliver a lot of riches to makers of WiMax products. It also has a chance to flop, to be pushed aside by more popular emerging technologies.

Still, Intel, Fujitsu, Freescale Semiconductor and others are scrambling to develop WiMax chips, already finding gear maker customers looking to gain early-mover advantage. (See related stories, A5-A7.)

A mobile version of WiMax will be unveiled within days, insider Fawzi Behmann said in a recent interview. Behmann is director of strategic marketing for Freescale's wireless chips group.

"A person who is an active participant in (developing) the standard at IEEE debriefs me on development of the standard," Behmann said. The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, or IEEE, is the main electronics standards group.