The IEEE’s November Wi-Fi standards-development meeting came and went without much fanfare, but debate over how to best reach a standard is causing some fireworks.
Airgo Networks Inc. said it is disappointed that there was no proposal to vote on at the meeting, and wondered out loud whether there would be a proposal on the table at the January meeting.
“The open standards development process was superceded,” said David Borison, director of product management at Airgo. Airgo charges that the Enhanced Wireless Consortium, a group created to speed the process, is actually delaying it. “The EWC didn’t do what they said they would do. In fact, the EWC effectively derailed the joint proposal process, delaying it by at least two months.”
Broadcom Corp., a member of the EWC, said that’s not the case. “At the IEEE meeting in November, the 802.11n Task Group made considerable progress toward the 802.11n standard,” said Bill Bunch, director of marketing at Broadcom. “The draft text of the EWC specification was used to accelerate the creation of the Joint Proposal draft and a harmonized specification has emerged that also addresses the needs of handset vendors.
“The formation of the EWC has brought together more than 40 companies with diverse requirements in pursuit of a single specification that has widespread support capable of generating technical consensus among IEEE voters, a feat that had not yet been accomplished in the 802.11n process. As a result of the progress at the November IEEE meeting, the EWC has been proven to have a positive impact on the standards process, which is now on track to produce a next-generation standard that will satisfy the broadest cross section of Wi-Fi device makers.”
“Significant progress was made at the November meeting,” agreed Intel Corp. spokeswoman Amy Martin. Intel also belongs to the EWC. “Many outstanding issues were resolved, and many more will be addressed prior to the January meeting. We’re continuing to work with the Joint Proposal team, and we expect to vote on a proposal at the January meeting.
“Our goal all along has been to accelerate the process. Things were moving along slowly-we brought together to two sides to come up with a compromise, to dive in and hammer out all the things that were issues on both sides and come to a unified proposal,” Martin said. “We are trying to make sure that the needs of all the different market players are met.”
Airgo isn’t convinced. The company said the EWC has only created confusion. Airgo contends the proposals that were on the table before the EWC was created were similar enough that the two sides would have probably worked things out by now, had the EWC not jumped into the fray.
“There’s a lot at stake for these companies, and this is nothing more than a Hail Mary pass at the end of the fourth quarter by a group of companies who realize that they came to the game late, and now they’re trying desperately to stop the market-share erosion that they’re experiencing.” said Borison. “The longer they can delay the standards process, the longer they can sell their existing technology. …Either way, Airgo wins, because our MIMO technology is marching forward. The more they delay, the more our base grows. They will eventually have to interoperate with our products. It’s in their best interest to move quickly.”
As it stands today, the Wi-Fi Alliance estimates that the IEEE group’s work on the 802.11n standard will wrap up by the end of 2006. In October, the EWC was formed by a group of companies who said they planned to accelerate the IEEE’s 802.11n standards-development process by promoting an industry-supported specification. Consortium members include chipmakers Broadcom and Intel, along with Cisco Systems Inc., Sony Corp. and Toshiba Corp.
Immediately, Airgo said it smelled a rat.
“This seems like an effort to rush to market with a closed standard, and possibly delay the standards-specification process of the IEEE,” said Greg Raleigh, president and chief executive of Airgo, , a Multiple Input Multiple Output chip developer.
The 802.11n standard for Wi-Fi is said to be up to 10 times faster than existing Wi-Fi technologies and is to be compatible with the existing standard, which will enable older Wi-Fi devices to work with newer products. MIMO technology, which Airgo develops, has been adopted as the foundation for the IEEE’s 802.11n standard. Airgo’s True MIMO chipset is considered a pre-802.11n solution that delivers higher throughput and greater range than 802.11g by using multiple antennas for data transmission. It is backward compatible with Wi-Fi networks that use the unlicensed 2.4 GHz spectrum band.
Airgo said it suspects that the companies who formed the EWC aren’t necessarily interested in speeding up the standardization of 802.11n. Rather, they hope to slow down the process so that they can race to market with their own “closed standard” products, hence gaining a share of the market with pre-802.11n solutions.
Once a standard is ratified and products are certified, companies will be on more of a level playing field. But right now, depending on their technology and their market position, some companies stand to benefit by getting their products to market before anyone else.
The Wi-Fi Alliance urged a cautious approach. “There is a lot of excitement in the industry right now, and many companies are eager for an 802.11n standard to be ratified by the IEEE,” said Frank Hanzlik, managing director of the Wi-Fi Alliance. “We think the IEEE is the best organization to develop standards for this industry.”
By the end of 2006, 802.11n and pre-802.11n chipsets will be on the market and ratification of a standard will move the whole market forward, which should benefit everyone, said Sam Lucero, senior analyst at ABI Research. “It looks as if the EWC’s proposals and the existing `joint proposal’ dovetail well, and we hear that a draft standard may appear as early as January.”
Regarding Airgo’s stance, Lucero stated: “They say that they have all the fundamental technical pieces to do what the EWC is recommending. But they had a good 18-to-24-month lead on the rest of the market in terms of pushing this MIMO-based technology out. Suddenly, that has been erased. If EWC’s proposals are accepted, tiny Airgo will be up against Atheros, Marvell, Intel and others.”
