Broadcom Plans to Build Chips for Linking PCs Within the Home

Broadcom Corp., the leading supplier of cable-modem chips, unveiled plans to enter the home-networking market with products for high-speed connections, building on its technology for moving data over telephone and cable lines.

The Irvine-based company said its home-networking products will send voice, video and data among personal computers, printers and other home-computing devices. The network will use existing phone wire within residences as its backbone and transfer data at the rate of 10 megabits per second. That’s 10 times the current standard for such home networks, Broadcom said.

The home-networking market is projected to reach $1.5 billion by the end of 2002.

Broadcom and Pleasant Hill, Calif.-based Tut Systems Inc., a developer of high-speed data products for transmission over phone lines, collaborated in developing Broadcom’s new MediaShare product.

Broadcom shares fell $3 to close at $128 and Tut rose $2.50 to close at $62.50, both on Nasdaq.