Here’s what got us talking in the RCR Wireless News editorial department last week:
Throwing caution, and perhaps good sense to the wind, the Wi-Fi Alliance has decided that it will begin certifying pre-standard IEEE 802.11n products beginning next year. In essence the Wi-Fi Alliance has taken it upon itself to approve interoperability between .11n products that do not have a standardized specification. I’d think herding cats would be easier.
The Wi-Fi Alliance noted that the certification would include baseline features of the expected IEEE .11n standard, and that a second phase of the certification would “bring full alignment with the ratified standard.”
Is the Wi-Fi industry so desperate for a new letter to attach to the end of “.11” that it cannot wait for the IEEE to adopt a standard that would ensure interoperability? Is .11b, .11a and .11g so insufficient to handle our wireless local area network needs that we need to introduce a non-standardized alternative?
The benefits of the .11n standard are supposed to include greater speeds and increased coverage compared with the .11g specification. But it seems to me that both of those excuses are moot.
Current WLANs are slowed down not by the maximum available throughput the transmitting technology can handle, but by the backhaul used to carry the traffic. If a consumer installs a WLAN in their home using a 640 kilobit per-second DSL connection, why would he need a wireless technology capable of handling over 50 megabits per second? Even T-1 lines, which T-Mobile USA Inc. uses for its Hot Spot service, only provide speed up to 1.5 Mbps.
And as for the coverage issue, the horribly named Multiple-Input, Multiple-Output antenna technology that is key to increasing .11n coverage is already available by vendors producing .11g products.
Consumers are already being tempted with “pre-.11n” products sold alongside .11b, .11g and .11a. So of course it makes sense to now add a “Wi-Fi Alliance certified pre-.11n” option.
In explaining its decision, the Wi-Fi Alliance’s Frank Hanzlik claimed, “We believe the maturity of the baseline features in the pre-standard certification diminishes the risk that products won’t comply with IEEE 802.11n when it is ratified.” So if I buy one of these “Wi-Fi Alliance Certified pre-.11n” devices, will it work with fully IEEE certified .11n products? And if it doesn’t, will the company I bought the “Wi-Fi Certified pre-.11n” device from replace it with a fully IEEE .11n product, or better yet will the Wi-Fi Alliance, which “certified” my “Wi-Fi Alliance Certified pre-.11n” device, buy me a new one?
What’s the hurry Wi-Fi Alliance? Why not let the IEEE do its thing and approve a standard that everyone can than use to ensure interoperability between .11 technologies?
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Parks Associates modified its segmentation of the U.S. gaming market, claiming that it had identified six market segments instead of the previous two. The best new segment is the “Incidental gamers” that “lack motivation and play games mainly out of boredom. However, they spend more than 20 hours a month playing online games.” So there it is. I am an incidental gamer. Finally, a label I can live with.
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We just got our hands on Samsung’s new SGH-ZX20 HSDPA-enabled handset for Cingular. Beyond the dramatically faster download speeds, which are easily on par with EV-DO handsets from Verizon Wireless and Sprint Nextel, the new Sammy was underwhelming visually and has a mouthful of a name. Why bother launching a new phone packing the latest in high-speed data capabilities in a wrapper that should be used for free prepaid phones and sticking it with a yawner of a name. Where’s the marketing hype? I would think most Cingular customers are going to quickly bypass the SGH-Z…..zzzzzz…..for a Razr or Slvr. I’m not saying you have to go off the deep end like the LG Chocolate, but come on Samsung, you can do better than that.
