Motorola waits on 802.11n approval
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Company says it won't sell equipment using the next-generation Wi-Fi standard, as Intel and others are, until it's IEEE-certified.
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The 802.11n draft wireless standard moved further into mainstream acceptance on Tuesday with Cisco&#39;s announcement of integrated enterprise products.
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(InfoWorld) - âI-triple-what?â was the question being asked last week, after the Wi-Fi Alliance said it will start certifying next-generation wireless LAN products by the first half of 2007, regardless of whether the IEEE has signed off on new wireless specifications for them. The announcement last Tuesday was a break from tradition for the Alliance, which tests and certifies wireless LAN products from different vendors for interoperability; typically, the group waits until the IEEE has fully certified a wireless standard before testing products against it and putting its seal of approval on those that pass the test. In question is final approval of a specification for 802.11n, a proposed wireless standard that would support data throughput of 100Mbps or higher. A nasty fight over how to use multiple antennas and radios to achieve that performance boost has pushed back the expected approval of the specification several times. Final ratification of the specification is now scheduled for April 2008. With Wi-Fi products supporting some 802.11n features already available, the Wi-Fi Alliance couldnât wait around, said Managing Director Frank Hanzlik. The Alliance will use a two-phase certification process, testing for interoperability against whatever parts of the standard it believes are solid and unlikely to change, Hanzlik said. In Phase 2, the Alliance will use the approved IEEE standard, whenever itâs finished. Vendors strongly back the Wi-Fi Allianceâs dual-stage plan, even though some chip set makers have already performed interoperability tests for draft 802.11n products, Hanzlik claimed. âThe only way to really get the right kind of user experience is if thereâs an industrywide interoperability program,â Hanzlik added.
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(InfoWorld) - Motorolaâs Greg Brown was channeling Winston Churchill last week when he announced his companyâs plans to take on the BlackBerry market with wireless devices for all manner of enterprise jobs. âWe will address the needs of mobile workers in the office, out in the field, in the factory, at retail, and across the supply chain,â said Brown, president of Motorolaâs network and enterprise business. Hey! What about âon the landing groundsâ? But big talk was the order of the day, as Brown tried to explain what Motorola hopes to do after it digests its $3.9 billion acquisition of Symbol Technologies. Symbolâs stock and trade is handheld computers and bar-code scanners used to capture data in warehouses and factories. If you have signed for a UPS package recently, the chances are you did so on a Symbol device. Motorolaâs specialty, on the other hand, is WANs. The plan is to join the two and push more wireless data devices into all corners of the enterprise by cutting across devices, infrastructure, applications, and services, Brown said. âSymbolâs strength in capturing, moving, and managing data inside the building directly complements â¦ Motorolaâs network capabilities outside of the building,â Brown said. Motorola is already envisioning the types of products and services it will be able to offer. For example, Symbol is a leader in RFID, the short-range wireless technology that companies are just beginning to use to track products and assets. Motorola would like to expand RFIDâs reach by combining cellular, Wi-Fi, WiMax, and RFID in a way that can help enterprises track products throughout their lifecycles, spanning private networks inside offices and public networks outside, said Ed Zander, Motorolaâs chairman and chief executive. Symbol is developing wireless devices catering to various industries, such as medical, transportation, and retail. âI looked at all the devices and imagined the Wi-Fi and WiMax play,â Zander said. Motorola also sees opportunities in Symbolâs enterprise WLAN business. Symbol has deployed 45,000 such networks that will eventually need to be upgraded to higher speeds. And there are still lots of enterprises that have yet to install their first wireless networks, Zander added.
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Ziff Davis - Symbol's 'access port' will support 802.11a, b and g simultaneously.
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A new battle of technologies may be in the offing in the 802.11n arena as 12 key companies have developed a key proposal to counter another one announced last week that is backed by a group of top wireless players.
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Nokia announced that its 9500 Communicator has been granted IEEE 802.11b and WPA certifications by the Wi-Fi Alliance. The company also plans to provide the phone with Smartner&#39;s Duality Always-On push e-mail solution.
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In a briefing later this week, Intel is expected to announce the availability of a "tri-mode" Wi-Fi chip that supports the 802.11b wireless standard and its speedier cousin, 802.11g -- as well as the less-used 802.11a.
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NEW YORK, November 1 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Nokia today announced the Nokia 9500 Communicator has been granted the IEEE 802-11b and WPA (Wireless Protected Access) certifications by the Wi-Fi Alliance.
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It will be more than a year before the 802.11n wireless LAN standard is officially ratified, but columnist Craig Mathias claims that the time to deploy this new technology is now.
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802.14.5 is one of the many personal area network (PAN) standards around like Bluetooth and ultrawideband (UWB). Like most IEEE 802 standards, the wireless industry knew what the IEEE was doing (or didn&#39;t do in the case of UWB) was not enough.
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Bidding on a coveted block of wireless frequencies continued yesterday, as unidentified companies continued to compete for rights to build the nation's first open wireless network.
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Still holding for UWB The Bluetooth special interest group (SIG) is prepared to embrace Wi-Fi as a high-speed connection option while it waits for Ultra Wide Band (UWB) to become available on phone handsets, according to presentations by SIG chair John Barr.â¦
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(InfoWorld) - A patent claim by an Australian research organization would probably not sink the IEEE 802.11n standard, according to some wireless LAN industry veterans. The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) claims to have patents to essential technology in the standard and has been asked for assurances about how it will treat the technology, according to a recent report in The Register. The standards board of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers has said approval of 802.11n is at risk unless the organization gets a response from CSIRO, the report said. CSIRO, Australia's national science agency, is no stranger to wireless patent disputes. Earlier this year it won an injunction against Buffalo Technology (USA) for infringement of patents it said are part of the IEEE 802.11a and 802.11g standards. The agency also has cases pending against big Wi-Fi players, including Intel, Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft, and 3Com on similar claims. The group has said the industry didn't accept its offer to license the patents on reasonable and non-discriminatory terms. The IEEE sent CSIRO a customary request for a Letter of Assurance regarding 802.11n, according to The Register. In this type of letter, a company with patents that may be part of a standard says whether it will license its technology free or at a reasonable rate, won't enforce its patents, or won't license the technology, among other things. Neither CSIRO nor the IEEE could provide statements about the letter or a response in time for this article. Letters of Assurance are normally requested from companies that have been involved in drafting a standard, according to according to Bill McFarland, CTO of chipmaker Atheros Communications, who has been involved with the standards process. They don't guarantee the patent holder will never sue anyone who uses the technology, nor that unanticipated patent claims won't come up later from other parties, he said. "I don't know why they (IEEE) would suddenly decide in this particular case that not having a letter is reason enough to hold up with moving forward with the standard," McFarland said. IEEE 802.11n, designed to boost wireless LAN speeds to more than 100Mbps with longer range, has been eagerly awaited for years as it traverses a winding path to approval. The Wi-Fi Alliance has begun certifying equipment using the second draft of the standard in progress, a stopgap measure that should help consumers and small businesses choose products but may not satisfy enterprises that need to roll out and maintain large deployments. Standardization ensures gear from different vendors will work together. Last week, the 802.11n task group kicked off the process of writing and voting on a third draft that the group hopes to turn into the final standard, Atheros's McFarland said. Although major changes are unlikely, there are still many steps to go and the 802.11 working group probably won't approve the standard until next July, he added. The issue with CSIRO could almost certainly be resolved without significantly holding up the standard, said Farpoint Group analyst Craig Mathias, who wasn't commenting on the specifics of this issue. Although standards bodies don't like to write specifications that might infringe patent rights, that's not the only criteria they use, he said. In any case, it wouldn't be in CSIRO's interest to have 802.11n fail because the standard can create a bigger market and lead to more licensing revenue, he said. Even if CSIRO ended up suing 802.11n vendors, the new gear would come to market first. "There will be 100 million 11n products on the market before a case like this is ever settled," Mathias said. "You can write a check and make this all go away ... and if that raises the cost of an adapter by $10, so what?" Vendors routinely build potential licensing costs into their prices anyway, he said.
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Apple and Motorola are ready to show off a yet-to-be released cellular phone with an iTunes software client built in that could be on the market by July 2005, American Technology Research analyst
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Aruba Networks&#160;countersued two divisions of Motorola&#160;Wednesday, adding a new twist to a wireless LAN (local area network) patent-infringement case that affects some of the biggest vendors in the business.Symbol Technologies and Wireless Valley Communications, both of which are now&#160;owned by&#160;Motorola, sued Aruba&#160;in August. They claimed Aruba knowingly used technology covered by several patents they own, and are seeking an injunction and damages.But in its response to their complaint, filed Wednesday, Aruba claimed Symbol knew enough about Aruba&#39;s products in 2003 to say they might be infringing Symbol&#39;s pending patents. Aruba also argues both Symbol and Wireless Valley withheld information they were required to give to patent examiners. As a result, the patents are invalid and Symbol and Wireless Valley&#39;s complaints should be dismissed, the company said.Aruba also countersued, seeking declaratory judgments that it didn&#39;t infringe and that the patents are invalid and unenforceable. Aruba wants Symbol and Wireless Valley to pay the costs of the suit and its attorney fees.In 2003, when Symbol was an independent company, it came close to buying Aruba, according to the filing. Throughout the first half of that year, as the companies discussed the proposed deal, Symbol had &quot;essentially unfettered access&quot; to information about how Aruba&#39;s products were designed and made, Aruba said. Among the engineers inspecting its technology was the inventor on two of the patents involved in the suit, they said. The talks eventually broke off because the companies couldn&#39;t agree on terms, the filing said.Aruba argued that Symbol never warned it might sue over the patents, leading Aruba to infer that it didn&#39;t intend to enforce any patent rights. The company waited for four years after that inspection and then sued without warning on the eve of an Aruba quarterly earnings announcement, Aruba said. In addition, both Symbol and Wireless Valley knew about Aruba&#39;s business for years and should have known about the activities it sued over, yet only sued after Aruba had invested tens of millions of dollars in designing and testing its products, the company said.&#160;
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Intel Thursday announced the latest WLAN chipset for the next generation of its Centrino wireless product set. The new radio chipset will transmit on either the 2.4-GHz or 5-GHz bands, so it can support 802.