Net3

Net³ was a Wifi-like system developed, manufactured and commercialised by Olivetti in the early 1990s. It could wirelessly connect PCs to an Ethernet fixed LAN at a speed of up to 512kbit/s, over a very wide area. It was a micro-cellular system, in which each base station had an effective range of about 100m indoors, 300m outdoors, and the system supported seamless handover between base stations.

The system was based on the DECT standard, published in 1992. A prototype system was first demonstrated at the Telecom '91 show in Geneva in October 1991, and is believed to be the first public demonstration of the DECT transmission system. The product was launched in June 1993, and was the first product based on the DECT standard to reach the market, narrowly beating Siemens' highly successful Gigaset cordless telephone. It is also believed to be the first wireless LAN to be sold on the European market.

In its first version, the adapter cards consisted of half-size PC cards connected to an external desk-seated radio unit of modest dimensions. The second version, launched at Telecom '95, consisted of a PCMCIA card and a small external radio unit suitable for portable use.

The system was developed in the laboratories of Olivetti Sixtel, the telecommunications technology division of Olivetti in Ivrea, Italy. At a time when knowledge of commercial digital radio technology was scarce in Italy, the group began research in 1988 and developed in-house a high level of capability in DECT technology, including patented technology that became fundamental to the standard. The development was funded partly from corporate venture resources, partly from ESPRIT funding, and partly from an unusual but highly effective tool of industrial policy, invented by Ing. Augusto Vighi of the Istituto Superiore delle Poste e Telecomunicazioni. Vighi placed a contract for proof-of-concept DECT demonstration systems with a consortium of Italian technology companies, covering the full range of DECT applications. This accelerated the development not only of the Net3 wireless lan by Olivetti, but of the FIDO public system by Italtel and of a complete wireless PABX by SELTA.

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