Sydney's demand for wireless broadband boosts Unwired

Unwired -- which provides wireless Internet services to Sydney using a proprietary WiFi technology -- kicked off its commercial operations in September 2004. Customers living within range of an unwired base station can purchase a modem and connect to the Internet at speeds ranging from 64kbps to 1mbps.

David Spence, chief executive of Unwired, said the company was financially healthy and is experiencing strong growth in customer numbers, which should see it break even soon.

"This is excellent growth. Our customer growth is strong, we have a healthy cash balance and our costs are tightly controlled. Our business is well positioned after less than a year of commercial operations... This expansion rate was only exceeded by our opening month in September last year," said Spence.

The future for Unwired is also looking brighter after Intel launched its WiMax chips, which are designed to provide long distance, high capacity network connection. The success of WiMax will be extremely important for Unwired as the company own most of the 3.5GHz spectrum in Australia, which is the preferred WiMax band and key to the company's expansion plans.

"At this stage, we are only operating in Sydney which is equivalent to less than 25 percent of the overall Australian market. Our underlying cost structure is lower than any other metro-wide telecommunications network provider in Australia," said Spence.