Pace Micro Technology’s share price rocketed last week thanks to news of its co-operation agreement with nine other technology companies to adopt a common, open standard for high speed broadband wireless internet services. During the week Pace’s stock hit Pounds 2.86 a share, for stock that during the past year has languished as low as 62p (and 26p in early 1998), representing a five-fold increase for shareholders who have stayed loyal to the company.
Pace has linked with Cisco Systems, developers of the technology described as "breakthrough", which is capable of delivering two-way wireless communications for voice, data and video and will be available to both the consumer and business markets. The coalition’s objective is to offer any organisation developing Internet products and services (whether delivered to the PC, mobile phone or digital television) access to what a statement described as a "best-of-breed" community offering wireless broadband Internet solutions. The basis of the technology is Vector Orthogonal Frequency Division Mutliplexing (VOFDM).
Besides Pace and Cisco, other members of the coalition include Motorola, Broadcom Corp, Texas Instruments, Samsung, Toshiba, Bechtel Telecommunications, KPMG, LCC International and EDS.
Pace CEO Malcolm Miller said "this new technology will radically reduce the cost and time in rolling out networks to deliver digital interactive TV, Internet, telephony and video-conferencing."
Cisco’s new wireless technology is claimed to work well in congested city, suburban and rural environments by overcoming the line-of-sight, distance reach, coverage and antenna size problems of existing proprietary wireless systems mainly in lower frequency bands.
