Nortel Networks plans to trial its new public wireless local area network (LAN) architecture with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and British Telecommunications (BT).
The technology is designed to help drive reduced costs for transport of high-speed wireless data from Wi-Fi networks to wired broadband networks, Nortel said.
The project, part of Nortel’s “Business Without Boundaries” initiative, could reduce data backhaul costs by 75 percent, according to the company. Deployment costs also could be reduced substantially.
Nortel said the architecture began as an experimental development following a series of collaborative discussions between Nortel and MIT.
“The challenge of adapting simple, low-cost radio technologies like Wi-Fi to extend commercial public networks is not trivial,” said Nicholas Negroponte, co-founder and chairman of the MIT Media Lab. “Public telecommunications is approaching a renaissance with incorporation of innovative technologies like those Nortel Networks and MIT are trialing.
“Tomorrow’s distributed, flexible communications networks will look very different from the centralized, highly-engineered networks of today,” he added in a statement.
According to Nortel, its new public wireless LAN architecture is designed to go beyond traditional hot spots to provide broader, more convenient service coverage for enterprises and individual users.
Networking research at Nortel’s Ottawa Wireless Technology Lab in Canada led to the new public wireless LAN architecture. It includes a peer-to-peer access point architecture to backhaul data wirelessly to wired broadband networks.
“Nortel Networks is one of the industry’s most innovative wireless data network providers with a very strong heritage in public and private networking,” said Pascal Debon, president of wireless networks for Nortel. “Today’s announcements demonstrate our vision of converging public and private networks and positioning enterprises and service providers to create a seamless and highly efficient experience that will deliver mobile broadband and advanced data services to end users.”
Nortel also has proposed implementing a trial of the technology with BT and one of its leading enterprise customers.
The trial would include Virtual Private Networking (VPN), Internet browsing, e-mail, multimedia messaging, personal messaging, and other advanced services.
Nortel says it will also trial the technology with the MIT Media Lab on the campus in Cambridge, MA. During this trial, MIT students, staff and visitors will have the ability to connect to the Internet, send and receive e-mail, and access campus files and content securely from any location with any device.
Both trials should wrap up early next year, according to Nortel.
In addition, the MIT Media Lab plans to trial future wireless data services and applications created by MIT Media Lab staff and students. Applications will include the use of wireless networks to allow collaboration among intelligent devices and their users.
Nortel is a founding sponsor of the MIT Media Lab, and currently sponsors the lab’s Digital Life research consortium. Nortel expects that the MIT trial and the jointly proposed BT and Nortel trial will be completed in early 2004.
“Today’s announcement is a testament to our vision for the industry and our strategy of removing barriers to efficiency, productivity, and growth, and creating opportunities for new revenues and services,” Debon said. “We’re breaking new ground and leading a new wireless data era by providing our customers innovative technology that will help drive profits and position them to offer a compelling wireless broadband solution to enterprise and end users alike.”
Nortel: www.nortel.com
MIT Media Lab: www.media.mit.edu
