When mathematician Rajiv Laroia joined Bell Labs in the summer of 1992, he thought he had found his ideal niche-if not for life, then at least for a comfortably long time. Armed with his new doctorate and a passion to make his mark, he reported to the Mathematical Sciences Research Department, where he found a sweet opportunity to work with world-class mathematicians, engineers and statisticians. "There was no specific charter," Laroia relates. "We were given sort of free rein to do anything we wanted to do." Bent on first broadening his horizons, he dived into the basics of communications-wireless, optics, theory and more. Laroia envisioned writing papers and contributing to state-of-the-art systems. But he didn't foresee leaving AT&T's (now Lucent's) illustrious research division-especially not to start a company. He wasn't an entrepreneur.

What a difference a few years and the age of Internet fever can make. Early this year, Laroia did the once inconceivable by helping found Flarion Technologies, which is out to make ubiquitous, wireless data access so affordable that a vacationing California family of four could tool along a Maine highway and simultaneously be surfing the Web, listening to the Oakland A's over the radio, watching The Simpsons and sending e-mail-all without denting the budget. It turned out Laroia's horizon-broadening pursuits had engendered a novel idea about how to achieve such wonders, an idea so far outside the conventional wireless paradigm that it couldn't find a ready home at Lucent. So Laroia convinced his whole five-person team to come with him to start Flarion. Job security went out the window. In exchange for equity, people took pay and benefit cuts. Bye-bye Bell Labs.