MCI Tests High-Speed Wireless Access to the Net

AT&T and America Online are each betting the company on high-speed access to the Internet over cable systems — the former with its massive investments in the old TCI systems; the latter with its stock-melting acquisition of this site's corporate parent, Time Warner.

But yesterday MCI Worldcom started field tests of a different "broadband" technology for moving around big bursts of digitized data. And it doesn't need wires of any kind, cable or otherwise. The so-called "fixed wireless" technologies are starting in Jackson, Miss., Baton Rouge, La., and Memphis, Tenn. MORE