In 1986, the company
Telesystems SLW was founded in
Canada by 3
engineers formerly with
Marconi Radio in order to develop
spread spectrum wireless LANs.
In 1991,
Telxon and
Telesystems entered into an OEM agreement for
spread spectrum hardware. At that time,
Telxon was selling only
narrow-band hardware. The
Telesystems technology put
Telxon considerably ahead of their competitors, which at that time included
Symbol,
Norand,
LXE and
Intermec.
In 1992,
Telxon acquired
Telesystems outright.
In 1994,
Aironet was created from
Telesystems and portions of Telxon's RF division. At that point, it was privately held and
Telxon was both the company's largest stockholder and its largest customer.
In 1999,
Aironet filed an
IPO. This was done in part to raise cash for
Telxon, whose finances were rapidly
spiraling downward. The
IPO was not very successful, and
Aironet was purchased by
Cisco shortly thereafter.
In 2000,
Telxon was purchased by its chief remaining competitor,
Symbol.