The Wi-Fi Alliance said eight 802.11g products from six companies have received certification from the Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers.
The companies include Atheros Inc., Broadcom Corp., Intersil Corp., Melco Inc., Proxim Corp. and Texas Instruments Inc. Both Intersil and Atheros said they have received certification for the trio of a, b and g.
“Many companies and market segments have been waiting until products based on the final IEEE 802.11g standard amendment were certified for interoperability by the Wi-Fi Alliance,” said Frank Hanzlik, managing director of the Alliance. “The day has come.”
The products, which include four access points and four PC cards, were tested for interoperability.
Atheros’ product is an adapter, Broadcom has a reference design, and Intersil presented a PCMCIA adapter model as well as an access point developer’s kit model. Melco received a nod for its notebook adapter while Proxim got approval for its access point. TI received approval for reference designs for both its wireless LAN Cardbus and access point.
“Now that 802.11g is an official IEEE standard and the Wi-Fi Alliance has begun its certification for guaranteed interoperability, wireless customers can confidently adopt 802.11g products,” said Joseph Byrne, principal analyst at Gartner. “This is especially important for businesses deploying wireless equipment from various manufacturers, since products certified for 802.11g are guaranteed to be interoperable with all other Wi-Fi-certified 802.11b equipment.”
G enhances the speed for b and will help operators with data deployment.
“As 802.11g replaces 802.11b as the mainstream wireless LAN standard, the Wi-Fi seal of approval is the final vote of confidence for customers considering g equipment,” said Jeff Thurmond, vice president and general manager of Broadcom’s home and wireless networking business.
