The Register reports on a story that ran in a magazine called Computing Which? that details failures to get standard Wi-Fi gear from different manufacturers to interoperate: The editors tried to set up a Linksys 802.11g router and a Netgear bridge but couldn't get the two devices to interact. Eventually one Netgear help desk agent told the writers the products could be incompatible.
It doesn’t appear that the original story is online so it's hard to know more about this trial. It sounds as though the aim of the report was to test how easy or difficult it is to set up wireless networks. The writers concluded that it's too hard to use. It would be unfortunate if the industry has a hard time attracting additional users because the products are inoperable and difficult to use.