Computer chip giant Intel has teamed up with an Irish telecoms firm to offer one of the world's first commercial deployments of the wireless technology Wimax.

Wimax is a revolutionary wireless technology standard that enables companies to beam very high-speed internet signals over long distances into people's homes and businesses. Analysts predict that Wimax will remove the reliance on fixed lines that are traditionally provided by firms over a copper network.

In Ireland, Intel has decided to use the technology as an alternative to using fixed broadband connections, which have proved unsuitable at its site in Leixlip. It is also extending use of the technology to the local community, some of which cannot get access to existing broadband suppliers.

Irish Broadband (a subsidiary of National Toll Roads) will offer the new very high-speed Wimax broadband services to homes and business in the town. Eight schools and Leixlip's library will be given the service free for three years under the Intel and Irish Broadband arrangement.

But it will also start marketing broadband services over Wimax technology to local businesses in Leixlip shortly. It will also extend the service to residents of the town next year, when cheaper Wimax equipment is available.

"Intel is developing the silicon chips for Wimax and when these become generally available next year, it will greatly reduce the costs," says Mr Jim O'Hara, Intel Ireland's general manager. "Wimax will make it possible to build cost-effective, high-speed wireless connections to homes and businesses in urban and rural environments."

Intel has become involved in a small number of similar Wimax projects in the US but decided to undertake the project in Ireland because of the difficulty of getting fixed-line broadband or DSL.

For example, the manager of Intel's flagship Fab 24 chip plant, Mr Josh Walden, cannot get DSL at his house because he lives too far from a local Eircom exchange. But using the new Wimax technology, he can receive very high-speed broadband technology that enables him to take part in video-conferencing services. Similarly, more than 1,500 contractors working at Intel will use Wimax.

Wimax is a much more powerful version of Wi-Fi, which enables people to access the internet from laptops in limited areas such as hotel lobbies or airports.

It offers very high download and upload speeds for data of up to 12 megabytes per second, say Intel and Irish Broadband.

Intel will deploy the new technology in three phases, beginning in the next few months and bringing in newer versions of the technology as it becomes available.

The first generation of the technology will mean users will have to install an outside antennae on their building to receive a service.

But newer, more powerful Wimax technology will, by 2006, be installed in laptop computers, enabling people to connect directly to broadband.

Mr Paul Doody, managing director of Irish Broadband, said Wimax was the only way to provide 100 per cent national broadband coverage in the Republic.