But there are steadier underlying trends in which venture-capital companies, even today, continue to fund small companies they believe in and real advances continue. The creation of a new Internet communications structure goes forward at a rapid pace with scores of companies developing optical components and systems to send information via light waves, or photons, rather than electrons, which are slower. Wireless is emerging as a solution. A new telecommunications standard, called 802.11b, which facilitates wireless Internet connections to homes and offices, is helping users bypass telephone companies. The phone companies have been slow to offer reasonably priced broadband Internet service.
Products are already on the market.
Agere Systems, a new company partially spun off in March by Lucent Technologies, makes circuitry and antennas based on the 802.11b standard and is shipping them in volume. But that's the way it is in these downturns. Calif. Intel is doing just such preparation. Coming off a year in which it suffered delays and disappointments in product development, with earnings now falling and the stock price down 63 percent from its all time high, Intel is stepping up investment because it needs change. The company's microprocessors dominate the personal computer field.