While delivering the prescribed HR performance, WaveLAN turbo 11Mb cards consume less power than other similar products, making them ideal for use in mobile units where long battery life is essential, claims the company. The product also provides improved coverage and range, making it even more cost-effective. The new card also provides quality performances, competitive prices, apart from high-class security available in the industry, said company sources.

The card provides a choice of security levels, viz, the standard level called the Silver PC card, and an upper level titled Gold PC card. The Silver card employs wired equivalent privacy (WEP) security, using a 16 bit key, as defined by the IEEE, on the other hand, the Gold card provides enhanced security with a 128 bit key, utilising RC4 encryption.

"With this launch, wireless LAN users will get the benefits of high-speed mobile networking, backed by a worldwide standard, apart from multi-vendor inter-operability," said Lucent Technologies-India global commercial markets director V Natarajan.

Lucent Technologies plans to market the new card, alongwith its existing WaveLAN family products, through original equipment manufacturers (OEM) and through a network of value-added resellers (VARs).

Lucent Technologies, headquartered in the US, designs, builds and delivers a wide range of public and private networks, communication systems, software, data networking systems, business telephone systems and microelectronic components. The company, through its research and development arm -- Bell Labs - holds about 25 patents on high-speed WLAN technology.