The battle over what will be the worldwide next generation wireless standard is hotting up.

Yesterday we had the news that Sony Ericsson was among the companies to sign up to a new Nokia-led initiative pushing 4G technologies.

However, today, Intel has announced a massive investment into 4G's rival, its own system, which is called WiMax.

It has announced it will invest $500 million in Taiwan over the next 5 years, with a high percentage of this investment pumped into WiMax technologies.

Intel is predicting that WiMax will be commercially deployed in the US in the coming months, and that infrastructure in Asia should be ready by 2009-10.

Intel says that Japan will probably launch the first WiMax standard in Asia, and Taiwan and India could follow suit.

The news comes as Acer promised to launch laptops with WiMax capabilities in June or July this year.

"WiMax is a good solution for broadband and it is an affordable answer in terms of price and mobility. It's going to be huge in the coming several years", Acer chairman J. T. Wang told reporters at the same news conference that Intel announced its investment.

>> News - Nokia versus Intel on wireless
>> Via - Reuters