Unwired (ASX:UNW) CEO, David Spence, beaming from ear to ear and flanked by two Intel executives, described yesterday as a great day for Unwired, as he announced Intel's mammoth $37 million investment in the wireless broadband provider for 25% of the company.

Unwired, which has burned through vast sums of cash over the past 10 months to establish a ubiquitous metropolitan Sydney wireless broadband network, needed to raise additional capital to continue its network rollout Australia-wide. Intel, which wants to promote the WiMAX wireless broadband standard in order to sell its chipsets under development for laptops and infrastructure equipment, has been the answer to Unwired's prayers.

In exchange for its $37 million cash injection, Intel will receive more than 82 million convertible notes in Unwired, which amounts to about 25% of the company's shares.

Announcing the Intel investment, Spence declared the launch phase of Unwired as over and that "the rollout" has commenced.

"Unwired will be able to fast track the rollout to major metropolitan areas in the next year," said Spence. "As part of the deal we plan to jointly promote with Intel the 802.16e standard for WiMAX solutions. We have the chunks of spectrum required for that and more than 28,000 customers as at the end of June. Today wireless broadband is a viable alternative. When WiMAX is introduced, wireless broadband will be a major force. We will deploy the WiMAX network from next year but we will continue to run our proprietary technology alongside WiMAX until customers are ready to move over."

Spence likened the advent of wireless broadband, with the WiMAX standard, to the relationship between mobile and fixed line voice telephony. "Mobile phones are taking over from fixed line telephones," he said. "The same thing will happen with wireless broadband. There will be faster speeds of 2 Mbps plus with global roaming. Like GSM replacing fixed phones, broadband will switch from being on a shared device to a personal device."

Although the Intel funds would be enough for Unwired's immediate plans, according to Spence, he did not rule out raising more capital if the company needed further funds in the future.

Varun Kapur, co-director of Intel's investment arm in Asia Pacific, Intel Capital, said that the Australian wireless broadband market is attractive. "Unwired has demonstrated that it has the network and it has the customers," Kapur said. "The upcoming WiMAX network Unwired plans to deploy will demonstrate how a service provider can deploy this standards-based technology across multiple metropolitan areas and serving millions of people."

In a day of very heavy trading, UNW shares closed up 7c to finish on 61c, with turnover of more than $5.3 million.