The Dallas-based semiconductor company was expected to announce today it will ship enough chips to power about 300,000 modem ports in the first quarter and nearly 1 million ports in the first half of the year.

"Everything is fast-forward with the Internet ... we expect it to continue to grow exponentially," said Bill Eversole, general manager of Texas Instruments' ADSL business.

Company officials expect to sell 300,000 modem ports, or 200,000 to 220,000 chip sets in the first quarter. Some chips power two or even four modem ports, so the number of chips sold would be less than the number of ports. The ADSL chips sell for $25 to $45 each.

ADSL, or asymmetric digital subscriber line, is a high-speed Internet service phone companies sell over their existing lines. Cable companies are pushing a rival technology, cable modem, which generally is cheaper and easier to install. Texas Instruments makes chips for both systems.

Eversole attributes Texas Instruments' increase in ADSL shipments this year to a pickup in orders from technology companies that supply major telecommunications firms.

Among Texas Instruments' most important customers in this market are IBM Corp., which builds ADSL equipment for San Antonio-based SBC Communications Inc.; Siemens AG, which supplies another German company, Deutsche Telekom AG; and South Korea's Hyundai, which supplies Korea Telecom Corp.

While reporting strong sales gains, analysts said Texas Instruments still trails industry leader Alcatel of France; Norwood, Mass.-based Analog Devices Inc.; and others in the ADSL market.

"They're fairly new players to the game. They just started to ramp up in the last year," said Kimberly Funasaki, a senior analyst at International Data Corp. "TI is an up-and-coming player, and this probably puts them in the top five."

If Texas Instruments' estimate of 1 million port sales in the first half is accurate, it would mark a significant share of the ADSL market — analysts expect the entire market to reach 8 to 10 million modems this year.