OTTAWA-In tune with its “Business Without Borders” vision, Nortel Networks Ltd. said it plans to trial its public wireless local area networks architecture with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and British Telecom plc.
Nortel said it will reduce the costs of transporting high-speed data between Wi-Fi networks and wired broadband networks.
With BT, Nortel’s system will enable virtual private networks, Internet browsing, e-mail, multimedia messaging, personal messaging and other advanced services using wireless devices. Students and staff of MIT will derive the same benefits from the system, said Nortel.
“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.
