WASHINGTON – AT&T announced Monday plans to test a promising new wireless technology that proponents claim would bring significant improvements to existing wireless technology capabilities. Known as WiMax, the new technology is backed by Intel Corp. and others, and could bring data speeds of up to six megabits per second per user over a distance of two to five miles.AT&T is hopeful that WiMax technology could allow the company to bypass leasing data lines from local phone companies, a significant cost at several billion dollars per year, and instead provide its own solution to its business customers in 270,000 buildings across the United States. Currently the company leases data lines from local phone companies for all but 7,000 of these buildings.

The tests in May will involve two different flavors of WiMax, one that requires line of sight to an antenna and one that does not.

Proponents of WiMax argue that the technology could prove a serious competitor to existing high-speed data lines as early as 2006.