BT has opened talks with makers of Wi-Max equipment, raising the prospect that Britain’s leading broadband supplier will make an aggressive move into the nascent wireless broadband technology. The company has issued a formal “request for information” (RFI) to the technology firms, including Alvarion.

The move, which sources close to BT sought to play down as an expected part of its continuing exploration of the technology, will fuel talk of its entry into a potentially expensive forthcoming auction of short-wave radio spectrum.

Analysts believe that the group, which is thought to have looked closely at Pipex, the Wi-Max licence-holder that recently went up for sale, could be seeking to use Wi-Max to boost its weak mobile telephony operation.

The emergence of the RFI comes before BT’s full-year figures presentation, at which the group is expected to post record £20.3 billion revenues.

Sir Christopher Bland, the retiring chairman, is expected to cap his achievement in restoring BT from financial weakness to a “new-wave” success story by unveiling a share buyback of up to £2 billion, funded by borrowing against its independent Openreach arm.

Alvarion and Cisco, the network equipment supllier, said that they had responded to BT’s RFI. Rudy Leser, the vice-president of strategy at Alvarion, said: “We think that [BT’s involvement] is a milestone for Wi-Max in the UK.”

People on the move can already link wirelessly to the internet through wi-fi. However, the technology’s range is restricted to access points known as “hotspots”, usually sited in cafés and airports.

In contrast, Wi-Max, dubbed “wi-fi with fries”, operates over a much wider range – potentially several kilometres – and at faster speeds. Proponents say that Wi-Max chips inserted into mobile handsets eventually will allow users to bypass mobile networks. Instead they could make much cheaper calls over the internet.

This year Ofcom will auction off a portion of airwave suited to both 3G mobile phones and to Wi-Max. A decision by BT to enter the auction could pitch it against big mobile players. BT has said previously that “many factors are still to be determined” before it can decide what value the spectrum represents.

A BT spokesman said that it could not comment on “rumour and speculation”. Wi-Max was “one option” among a number of new wireless broadband technologies that it was evaluating.

How it works

- A Wi-Max base station, similar to a mobile-phone tower, is connected to the core national network and sends out a radio signal

- The signal is picked up by a receiver, either a small box or modem or a chip built into a laptop or phone

- Base stations, which Airspan Networks provided in Pipex’s trials, cost about £100,000 to build. As the technology advances, costs of building a wireless network are expected to fall

- Wi-Max is a complicated technology fraught with pitfalls. Building a network involves difficult planning

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