Intel's WiMax Window Is Closing

Updated from 4:43 p.m. EDT

SAN FRANCISCO -- Intel(INTC Quote) is among several firms that have placed big bets on WiMax, a nascent wireless technology for high-speed Web access.

According to one consulting firm, howver, time is already running out: WiMax has six months left to prove itself or it will fade into oblivion.

The tight deadline appears in a new report from Frost & Sullivan, which asserts that the global market for mobile WiMax will be "insignificant" if commercial rollouts of the technology and wireless spectrum auctions don't take place by 2008.

"Recent events have been unfavorable toward Mobile WiMax," Frost & Sullivan program manager Luke Thomas said in a statement, citing Sprint Nextel's(S Quote) delay in launching commercial WiMax service.

While Sprint was supposed to begin offering WiMax in certain U.S. cities in April, the carrier recently announced that its first city -- Baltimore -- would offer WiMax service in September, with Chicago and Washington D.C. now slated to go live in the fourth quarter.

WiMax holds the promise of high-speed wireless Web surfing, similar to today's WiFi hot spots, but with much longer ranges. The technology has been slow to get off the ground, however, and could soon be eclipsed by competing standards, such as Long Term Evolution, or LTE, an outgrowth of today's cellular telephone technology that is favored by carriers like AT&T(T Quote) and Verizon's(VZ Quote) wireless division>.

Intel, the world's No.1 chipmaker has been one of the main backers of WiMax, seeing it as a means of increasing demand for the notebook PCs that use its chips, as well as for a new breed of ultra-compact Internet-connected devices.