(FORTUNE Magazine) – When it comes to Narad Networks, neither of its co-founders, Dev Gupta and Andy Chapman, is prone to understatement. "This is the next-generation Internet," says CEO Gupta. Adds Chapman, who heads the company's marketing: "We will be the Intel of the bandwidth space."

These are fighting words in the technology world, but if this duo succeeds, they'll be entitled to boast. They're planning nothing short of a broadband revolution. Narad wants to turn today's typical cable television system--a combination of optical fiber and coaxial cable--into a switched digital network offering speeds of 100 megabits per second, about 200 times faster than a cable modem today. This could help solve the biggest single problem facing the entire tech industry: the lack of real broadband into homes and small businesses.

Narad's technology uses the cable network much the way ADSL technology uses phone lines--sending more capacious signals on the same hardware at higher frequencies. It has also developed accompanying software that allows customers to order movies, or even new phone lines, online and get immediate delivery. Says Leslie Ellis, a longtime cable technology analyst based in Denver: "The more you hear about this, the more you wonder why nobody ever did it before." While none of Narad's architecture--which includes three semiconductor technologies and two software systems--is yet installed anywhere, Chapman says that by October, four major cable operators will be testing it.

Narad's pedigree is impressive. Networking pioneer Bob Metcalfe made Narad his first investment as a venture capitalist with Polaris Venture Partners. (He recently joined the company's board.) Gupta, a Bell Labs veteran, invented bandwidth-enhancing technologies for the telephone network. And he and Chapman have launched and sold two successful networking companies.

The company has chosen the right platform for ambition this vast. No other infrastructure matches the capacity of the cable pipe. Gupta's initial plan of attack: Help cable companies target small businesses, which spend far more than consumers on communications. That should underwrite the modest costs of launching Narad's services.

The bold claims go on and on. "Now what [Narad] has to do is prove them," says Ellis. "Making technology actually work is always the hardest part." True, but our gut says these guys could succeed.