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Technology Stocks : Vari-L (VARL) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bosco who wrote (2646)	2/9/2001 4:16:07 PM
From: Mark Oliver	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 2702

I wonder if this development by Lucent will replace the need for buying Vari-L VCO chips, and if not it would seem to make their ingredient into base stations even more interesting to a buyer. Really, if they have technology, why doesn't someone buy them? Regards, Mark Lucent Announces Breakthrough Chip By BRIAN BERGSTEIN, AP Business Writer SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) - Lucent Technologies Inc. announced Wednesday a breakthrough it hopes will improve the quality and lessen the cost of wireless networks. Researchers in Lucent's Bell Labs have created what they believe are the first all-silicon chips for the receivers in base stations that get radio signals from mobile devices, such as cell phones or handheld computers. The receivers generally in use now have 10 to 20 chips made of gallium arsenide, which has been considered the best material to handle a wireless network's complicated tasks. Lucent said its new system, which employs just three silicon chips, is 100 times smaller. Plus, the pure silicon chips are 10 to 100 times less expensive. The breakthrough, which will be employed in Lucent's next generation of wireless networks over the next four or five years, will improve the quality of streaming media and other rich content for wireless Internet users, spokesman Steve Eisenberg said. The development is ``a move in the right direction'' but just one of many steps necessary to speed the widespread rollout of wireless Internet transmitters, said Sean Badding, a senior analyst for The Carmel Group, a market research firm in Carmel. ``I don't see anything significantly changing that's going to drastically improve Lucent's position'' in the short term, Badding said. Lucent's fortunes have fallen sharply in the past year as the company severely misjudged the market for fiber-optic network equipment used by telephone and Internet service providers and repeatedly missed earnings targets. Last month, the company announced plans to cut 16,000 jobs to try to restore its former luster. Lucent's stock has dropped 81 cents Wednesday to $17.01, less than a quarter of the stock's peak value of $84.18 in December 1999. Lucent, based in Murray Hill, N.J., announced the new design at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference in San Francisco, a day after the struggling company revealed it was closing its small Silicon Valley research center in Palo Alto. -