Announcement of a partnership between UK chip developer, picoChip and Korea Telecom has opened up the possibility of WiMAX access points supplanting WiFi for wireless communications in the home.
The two companies have formed a partnership to develop home-base stations, otherwise know as 'femtocells' conforming to the mobile WiMAX standard IEEE 802.16e-2005 and tis Korean variant, WiBro, which KT is now using to launch a commercial network in Korea. However, Korean carriers and manufacturers have global aspirations for the technology.
(femto is the SI prefix denoting 10-15 and next in the scale down from the more familiar micro, nano and pico. Should technology produce even smaller base stations, the SI system has three further prefixes available: atto, zepto and yocto.)