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The deployment will begin in December with trial base stations sited around the town, where DSL broadband is limited or unavailable. Up to 500 residents or businesses will evaluate the WiMAX service, receiving connection speeds of between 2Mbps and 10Mbps. After six months, the rollout will be extended to provide wider coverage across Milton Keynes.

'WiMAX is an exciting opportunity for Pipex and we're delighted that we are now able to trial the technology in a customer environment,' said Mike Read, CEO of Pipex. 'This will be the first such trial in the UK and positions Pipex Wireless as the lead WiMAX provider in the market.'

Based around the proposed IEEE 802.16 wireless standard, WiMax holds out the promise of ultra-fast broadband. Compared with the Wi-Fi standard it can provide increased bandwidth and range. As such it is being seen as a way of delivering a new generation of data and video services to mobile devices such as notebooks and PDAs in high density urban environments.

In its official announcement, Pipex has fleshed out technical details of the rollout. Specifically, base station equipment and subscriber terminals will be provided by Airspan Networks and Ericsson will create and operate the radio network and required roof-top infrastructure.

Intel partnered with Pipex in April 2006, to push WiMax (Wireless Interoperability for Microwave Access) technology in the UK. Intel's venture capital investment organisation, Intel Capital, and Pipex Communications jointly formed Pipex Wireless as a wireless operator providing broadband services in major metropolitan areas.

While Intel Capital is investing $25 million in the new company, Pipex has transferred its 3.6GHz UK spectrum licence to Pipex Wireless to enable it to deploy services based on WiMax.