The Wi-Fi Alliance has announced a merger with Wireless Gigabit Alliance to bring the latter's technology under its care.
Known as WiGig, the standard has been developed over the past four years and is currently going through the certification process to enable its inclusion into devices needing wireless connectivity, although some manufacturers have jumped the gun and are looking at putting compatible products on the shelves early this year.
Running over the 60GHz frequency – much higher than the traditional 2.4GHz, 3.6GHz and 5GHz of Wi-Fi or mobile signals such as 3G or 4G – WiGig avoids interference from other devices, enabling it to reach speeds of 5Gbps or even higher.
The long-term aim is to use the standard in both home and office environments to replace cables with reliable, high definition connections between devices and users.
Despite the support of the Wi-Fi Alliance for the past two years, the WiGig Alliance has operated separately and it is only today's memorandum of understanding (MOU) that will see the two merge and WiGig technologies come under the wing of the former, more established organisation.
“This is an exciting technology, and has been an important highlight of our certification roadmap for some time, so we are delighted to take this step,” said Edgar Figueroa, CEO and president of the Wi-Fi Alliance.
“Combining the expertise of Wi-Fi Alliance and WiGig Alliance will deliver a terrific user experience with 60GHz solutions, and will help ensure that a full range of interoperable WiGig solutions reaches the market as quickly as possible.”
Dr Ali Sadri, president and chairman of the WiGig Alliance, added: “We set out four years ago with the simple goal of realising a global wireless ecosystem of interoperable, high-performance devices that would operate seamlessly. In that time there have been many challenges to overcome but we have now created a market that simply did not previously exist.
“Consolidating activities with the Wi-Fi Alliance at this juncture will ensure WiGig’s mainstream success to the benefit of technology users everywhere.”
The merger is expected to be completed in the middle of 2013 once planning and due diligence has been taken care of.
03 Jan 2013