AT & T / Bell Labs (now lucent) "helped weave the technological fabric of modern society". These guys made UNIX in 1969, along with "stereo recording, sound motion pictures, the first long-distance TV transmission, the first fax machine, the touch-tone phone, several generations of modems, communications satellites, lasers, solar cells, cellular telephony and lightwave communication systems".

They are now part of the naming confusion surrounding AT&T/Lucent/Agere/Avaya.

From what I can tell, originally Agere was a division of Lucent, which was a division of AT&T. In 1991, AT&T assimilated a company called NCR (Which was where the 'father of Wifi'). NCR's Wifi guys became a division of Lucent when AT&T gave Lucent the flick in 1996, and when Lucent got rid of Agere in 2000, NCR was shunted into this divison.

Agere lost it's wireless focus when it sold Orinoco to another well known, Proxim, in 2002. Since then they seem to have gone downhill in a big way.

> Can someone check all that? Sure as hell confuses me - and what does it have to do with bell labs anyway?!

* (http://www.bell-labs.com/ Bell Labs Website)