An international technical group on Thursday gave its stamp of approval to wireless technology that can transmit data two to five times faster than existing short-range network gear known as 'Wi-Fi.'

Approval from The Institute of Electrical Electronics Engineers, a technology industry standards-setting body, could encourage business to use gear based on the new standard called 802.11g, analysts said.

"This approval will accelerate the process," said W R Hambrecht analyst Satya Chillara, who expects that 2003 Wi-Fi sales will top the previous three years altogether.

But consumers have already bought more than 6 million products based on 'g' this year and businesses will begin buying it next year, "when technology budgets are freed up", according to Chillara.

The new standard works with gear based on the existing Wi-Fi standard, called 802.11b, and runs at theoretical speeds of up to 54 megabits, or millions of bits per second, compared with 'b''s 11 megabits per second theoretical speed.

But in some cases 'g' gear, which has a shorter range than 'b', reaches just double the older technology's speed, Gartner Inc analyst Kenneth Dulaney said.

Dulaney also pointed out that it makes less sense for offices, which have already installed the older technology, to upgrade to 'g' unless they overhaul the entire network, since mixed connections would only support the slower speeds.

Separately, Texas Instruments Inc, a supplier of network computer chips used to build wireless computing gear, said that with the IEEE approval, it had begun on Thursday to ship chips based on the "g" standard to its customers.

But companies such as Intersil Corp, Broadcom Corp. and privately owned Atheros, which specialize in Wi-Fi, have already sold chips for products based on the new standard. This puts them well ahead of Texas Instruments and chip leader Intel Corp., which only began selling products based on the older standards earlier this year, Chillara said.

"They're definitely behind," said Chillara, referring to Intel and Texas Instruments.

Intel stock closed up 25 cents, or 1.14 percent, at $22.14 in Thursday trading on the Nasdaq, where Intersil finished down 1 cent at $24.55 and Broadcom ended the day up 35 cents at $26.77.