Perhaps the biggest gotcha in 802.11a is that it is still merely a standard -- there are no products on the market, and the technology will take some time before hitting the channel. Atheros Communications, Radiata Communications and Intersil Corp. have announced plans for 802.11a chipsets. And in November, Cisco Systems said it is acquiring Radiata for $295 million.

Lucent Technologies has not disclosed its plans for 802.11a. Both Atheros and Radiata claim to have complete two-chip CMOS (complementary metal oxide semiconductor) solutions capable of delivering up to 54 Mbps within the 802.11a specification. We're most impressed with the Atheros implementation, which integrates a significant amount of auxiliary hardware that must be "added" to the Radiata solution. As a result, we expect the most efficient PC Card solutions to be based on the Atheros silicon, while a number of access points and lower-cost PC Card solutions will be based on Radiata's.

Both vendors claim they can deliver 802.11a hardware for a price very close to that of today's 802.11b solutions. But note: You won't be buying solutions from Radiata or Atheros -- they'll just make the chips. Third-party OEM vendors will deliver these solutions branded with their own logo and with their own custom software. Atheros has said it hopes to begin delivering volume silicon to its OEMs in July, and that we can expect solutions to appear on the market by late August. These solutions will use 1.76 watts when running at 54 Mbps?20 percent to 40 percent more power than today's 802.11b PC Cards use. Consider it the price of performance.