Thanks to an emerging wireless technology known as WiMax, students at the Instituto Agropecuario de Monte in Buenos Aires, Argentina, now can use the internet for research in their classrooms--and from locations in the countryside several miles away.

This rural agricultural school--90 miles outside the Argentine capital--is one of the first active test sites for WiMax, a wireless broadband technology that reportedly can broadcast a wireless internet signal over several miles without needing a clear line of sight. Proponents of the technology say it will be instrumental in helping communities realize their vision of ubiquitous wireless connectivity--but skeptics point out there's a long way to go before that happens.

"WiMax is definitely changing how we do education," said Maria del Carmen Villar, the school's director, during a demonstration of the technology last month. For the demonstration, del Carmen Villar's image was streamed over the internet to attendees of the Intel Developer Forum conference in San Francisco.

The demonstration showed WiMax can fulfill at least some of the many promises made over the years.

It's been hyped as an affordable way to bring the internet to poorer and rural regions around the world, break the broadband duopoly of cable and telephone companies, and eventually cover entire countries with seamless, high-speed internet access for viewing video, making phone calls, and completing other data-intensive tasks.

Trouble is, despite years of promises, WiMax has yet to move beyond trials and carefully scripted demonstrations, including those at the Intel Developer Forum.

Skeptics question whether all the promises can be fulfilled and suggest that other technologies can solve the same problems sooner.

"Any new technology that comes out takes a while before it either fails or becomes broadly established. In that period, people can say it's been overblown," said Sean Maloney, general manager of the mobility group at Intel Corp., one of WiMax's biggest cheerleaders. "I don't think that applies to WiMax."

WiMax--short for Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access--is expected in two flavors. The first, known as fixed wireless, is similar to the wireless standard known as Wi-Fi, but on a much larger scale and at faster speeds. A nomadic version would keep WiMax-enabled devices connected over large areas, much like today's cell phones.

Supporters say WiMax would complement and not compete with existing technologies such as Wi-Fi, the wireless networking technology now available through countless hotspots in schools, parks, coffee shops, airports, and other locales around the world.

While Wi-Fi typically provides local network access for a few hundred feet with speeds of up to 54 megabits per second (Mbps), a single WiMax antenna is expected to have a range of up to 40 miles with speeds of 70 Mbps or more.