Lucent, Nokia and 3Com in Wireless Effort

Lucent Technologies, Nokia and 3Com intend to found a new industry group that will adopt standards for wireless computer networks and certify products that meet those standards.

The Wireless Ethernet Compatibility Alliance (WECA), expected to be introduced today, hopes to make go-anywhere computing as commonplace as using a mobile phone by making it less of a gamble for consumers and network operators to invest in expensive wireless equipment.

While users of laptop computers and other portable devices can already dial up to the Internet and private company networks with a wireless modem, the connections are often slow and unreliable from location to location.

The industry envisions a more robust, dependable link with local wireless networks deployed everywhere--airports, parks, highways, homes--like the cellular “pods” that provide continuous mobile phone service as a person travels.

So far, such local-area networks, or LANs, have been deployed only sparingly in corporate settings such as a company building or campus. But in a sign of things to come, the new iBook laptop from Apple Computer was introduced with an optional wireless transmitter that allows users to roam their homes or offices freely while using the Internet.

“One of the visions of wireless in general is that you’re no longer tied to a physical location when you want to communicate,” said Craig Mathias, chairman of the Wireless LAN Research Laboratory at the Worcester Polytecnic Institute in Massachusetts.

“Most people who travel with computers have to find a telephone that they physically plug into,” he said. “It’s so nice with a wireless network. You just turn it on.”