A group of 27 technology companies said on Monday they would collaborate on a new, faster Wi-Fi wireless Internet connection standard for computers and other portable devices.
The alliance, dubbed Enhanced Wireless Consortium, joins previously separated camps that were heading towards separate standards for wireless networking
It includes some of the biggest wireless chipmakers such as Broadcom and Intel as well as network equipment maker Cisco and portable computer makers Lenovo, Sony and Toshiba.
The new Wi-Fi standard is known as 802.11n and follows the 802.11a, b and g standards. The n-version is billed to be two to 10 times faster than current Wi-Fi technologies and will enable high-quality wireless video transmission in office and home networks.
View: The Enhanced Wireless Consortuim
News source: USA Today
The alliance, dubbed Enhanced Wireless Consortium, joins previously separated camps that were heading towards separate standards for wireless networking
It includes some of the biggest wireless chipmakers such as Broadcom and Intel as well as network equipment maker Cisco and portable computer makers Lenovo, Sony and Toshiba.
The new Wi-Fi standard is known as 802.11n and follows the 802.11a, b and g standards. The n-version is billed to be two to 10 times faster than current Wi-Fi technologies and will enable high-quality wireless video transmission in office and home networks.
Spokesmen from Toshiba also underlined the need to offer video content stored on HD DVD media that will not feature any regional restrictions, as happens with current DVDs. Although final decisions about this matter have not yet been announced, it is possibe that the same HD DVD discs will be reproduced by any HD DVD player worldwide.
Apart from the HD DVD, the DVD Forum announced that it has begun the standardization of the DVD-RW DL which it expects to be finalized by the end of 2005. The new DVD-RW DL discs will not be compatible with current DVD players, since their reflectivity value is not within DVD specifications (8%). The provided DVD-RW DL media are expected to allow recording at 2x, featuring a 2.66GB (8cm) as well as an 8.54GB capacity for 12cm discs.
Another interesting announcement is the possible standardization of the 12x DVD-R DL media in early 2006. Lastly, the 6-16x (CAV) recording speed for DVD-RAM (Class 1) will be available under the newly introduced "DVD-RAM2" logo. The reason for introducing a new logo for the 16x DVD-RAM recorders/media is that there is a need to distinguish it from the current DVD-RAM hardware (Class 0). The 5x DVD-RAM media will not be able to be written with current DVD-RAM recorders.

"The future is wireless"
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?si...1247236&tid=193
Not only that, but it is cheap to setup and maintain in commercial settings. Sure, getting a larger range and making it faster would be nice. Just about everywhere I go, there is a hot spot near by (either work, home, university, and coffee shops).
What would be nice a next step for 802.11 is to lower the power requirements. It sucks the life out of laptops and PDAs pretty fast, so better power usage would be a step in the right direction I think.
I would like to see more Cell phones taking advantage of 802.11 as well. The fact that you have to go through your cell phone providers slow as hell "mobile web" at some rate/min is pure crap considering how wide spread 802.11 is. The Internet should be free to cell phone users wherever free wi-fi is available.
Unlike what happened when 802.11g was coming out where there was a draft standard and all the companies used the same stuff and they had some idea what the final would look like. Here what most companies did was just implement MIMO technology in the 802.11g standard but there is more to 802.11n then that. And that is why they cannot just release a firmware or driver update.
Commenting has either been disabled on this article or you are not logged in. Click here to login or register, its free!
Note: Anonymous commenting is disabled in order to keep the quality of responses to a high standard.