Lucent rides the open highway Beta version of Inferno debuts on the Internet >BY Chris Bucholtz, West Coast Bureau Chief

Developers will get their first look at Lucent Technologies' Inferno software suite this week when the company makes a beta version available on its World Wide Web site.

The suite, which will support interactive applications over any communications network, including telephony networks, satellite networks and the Internet, has already been supplied to some larger carriers for inspection and experimentation, said Phil Winterbottom, a member of Lucent's technical staff.

"We've been shipping source code to large telcos for some time, but this beta release will be the first opportunity for developers to acquaint themselves with how the pieces fit together," Winterbottom said. "The general thing here in the beta release is making sure that Internet service providers get a look at everything and have time to prepare for Inferno's deployment without going cross-eyed from trying to learn it all at once."

Inferno, which has been characterized as "dial tone for information" by Lucent, will enable carriers to use their voice and data networks for new applications. The system, which includes its own programming language, virtual machine and operating system, will also deliver applications to devices such as televisions, PDAs and set-top boxes.

The Internet rollout could be important to Lucent because of its relative inexperience selling to an open technology market, said Mike Arellano, senior vice president of Probe Research.

"In the past, Bell Labs had a ready-made customer in AT&T Network Systems," said Arellano. "Here, it's as different a story as it could be."

Lucent's Inferno Web site is located at www//inferno.belllabs.com. inferno.