The Austin, Texas, metro area is one of the focal points of the high-tech sector, not only in the United States, but in the world. Statistics tell part of the story.

Forrester Research Inc., a technology consulting firm, selected Austin as the most wired city in the United States. The index measured personal computer ownership, the proportion of residents who go online and those who use broadband connections at home.

Intel ranked Austin as the No. 3 “Unwired City,” based on the number of commercial or free Wi-Fi points in the city.

The metro has an abundance of high-tech workers, thanks in part to the University of Texas. Austin has been ranked as one of the leading metro areas for its concentration of knowledge workers during the past three years in Expansion Management’s Knowledge Worker Quotient™.

According to data collected by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, the University of Texas is one of the most innovative educational institutions in the country, placing fourth in the top 10 patenting U.S. universities of 2004. The university received 101 patents for invention during 2004, up from 96 in 2003.

Another way to show that Austin is at the center of the high-tech sector was the announcement in April that Freescale Semiconductor Inc. will keep its global headquarters in the metro.

The company plans to invest about $600 million and create about 500 jobs during the next 10 years.

Glaston Ford, director of corporate public relations for Freescale, said that when the company split from Motorola in an IPO in July 2004, relocating the corporate headquarters wasn’t on the radar screen.

The priority, he pointed out, was to get the company established as an independent entity.

But numerous metro areas around the country began to inquire about whether Freescale, a Fortune 500 company, wanted to relocate its headquarters operations.

“To some extent, the level of interest in our headquarters caught us by surprise,” Ford said.

After a site location search, Austin and Chicago became the finalist metros. Austin was chosen because of its quality of life, proximity to the company’s customers and other parts of its business, the ability to attract world class talent, and financial incentives offered by the city, Ford said.

“All cities were appealing, but Austin showed that it wanted us here,” he said. “The metro has a lifestyle for the creative class.”

The company has about 5,600 employees at three Austin locations, including manufacturing, R&D, as well as its transportation, wireless and networking businesses, Ford said.

Freescale will relocate its headquarters to a new location in Austin. Ford said the new site will have room to expand.

Freescale will receive tax abatements from the city of Austin tied to new capital investments in its infrastructure.

“If we don’t invest, we won’t receive the tax abatement,” Ford said.

The company would like to see Austin work on improving its transportation infrastructure, both highways and air access, Ford said.

There is a need for more direct domestic and international flights into Austin-Bergstrom International Airport, he noted.