Intel-led Wi-Fi group seeks to wrest control from open standards

Rethink IT, Nov, 2005

In September, Intel and three other chipmakers formed a breakaway group to develop their own specification for fast Wi-Fi, just as it seemed that the two factions warring to produce the official IEEE 802.11n standard in this area were approaching a truce. Those consortia, TGn Sync and WWise, claim to be close to arriving at a merged proposal, only to see the new group's numbers swollen to 27. Under the name Enhanced Wireless Consortium (EWC), the rogue faction looks set to bypass the IEEE process in the same way that another Intel-inspired body, WiMedia Alliance, has done in short range wireless standards.

The original founders of EWC were Intel, Atherus, Broadcom and Marvell. The new line-up also includes another WLan chipmaker, Conexant; plus all the largest consumer Wi-Fi equipment makers--Cisco/Linksys, D-Link, Buffalo, Netgear, 3Com, Symbol and US Robotics; consumer electronics/PC giants Sony, Toshiba, Apple and Lenovo; and others.

The enlarged group looks fairly unassailable in terms of control of the WLan market, especially as 802.11n increasingly becomes a technology for in-home digital networks rather than conventional access. With an eye on applications such as distribution of high definition TV around a house, the EWC says it would push Wi-Fi speed up as high as 600Mbps in a short timescale, leaping ahead of 802.11n targets of around 150Mbps in the first generation. It also claims to have a specification ready and waiting, ahead of the converged proposal promised by the two IEEE-focused groups, although with probably a few weeks in it, the claims to be speeding up the progress to 802.11n are somewhat hollow.

A SHIFT AWAY FROM TRUE OPENNESS

As in the UltrawideBand saga, the action may accelerate standards development by circumventing the IEEE's cumbersome and feud-susceptible processes. But it also shifts the networking industry away from true open standards to a model more familiar in consumer electronics--the key growth market, of course, for fast Wi-Fi and UWB--where powerful companies reach consensus around a technology and create a de facto standard, that is then subsequently ratified by an international body, almost as a fair accompli. This approach was taken by the WiMedia Alliance, when its proposal--based on UltraWideBand and OFDM--failed to gain the 75% majority needed to become the basis of the IEEE 802.15.3a standard for short range, high data rate networks. It then created its own alternative platform, which will be ratified by the ECMA standards body, a group that boasts a fast track process far less open to political schisms than the IEEE's.

There are many echoes of that situation in the new move by EWC, although the justifications are less obvious. In 802.15.3a, the IEEE taskgroup

had come to an apparently insurmountable impasse, which was holding up the creation of a standard indefinitely; in 802.11n, the two factions were close to agreement and have actually presented a merged proposal, which could be expected to be ratified fairly quickly. In 802.15.3a, very new concepts were being put forward, with backwards compatibility with the little used 802.15.3 standard a side issue; in 802.11n, it will be essential that compatibility with the well established Wi-Fi standards is maintained, and so there is less logic to starting afresh outside the IEEE.

It is hard to argue against the notion that Intel and its allies no longer see the IEEE as a body that meets their needs to get new technology to market quickly, nor as a group that they can influence to change its processes in favour of their business models. Significantly, some EWC members said they will make products based on the new specifications whether or not the IEEE accepts them--this is exactly what the WiMedia Alliance members said (when they were still known as the Multiband OFDM Alliance) when they first decided to break away from the IEEE MAC design and create their own alternative. In fact, this was never seriously submitted for IEEE approval, Intel having secured the services of ECMA as a more friendly alternative. Traditionally, once one standards body takes on a technology, others will back off, although this would clearly be far more complex in the world of Wi-Fi, where the 802.11 family and its Wi-Fi Alliance branding and certification are so well established.

In this case, then, it will be almost impossible for the IEEE not to work to get EWC back under its auspices. After all, the four founders of the group account for 80% of Wi-Fi chip sales. And if EWC does submit its proposal to the taskgroup, there will be huge commercial pressure to accept it, in order not to delay the standard beyond 2006. This would not only raise the risk of Intel taking its technology elsewhere, but also of the standard becoming irrelevant amid the tide of 'pre-n' products, delivering Wi-Fi performance at over 100Mbps, already sweeping the market.

AIRGO STANDS TO LOSE OUT

The biggest loser will be Airgo, whose MIMO smart antenna technology underpins the converged proposal but which competes head-on with EWC co-founder Atherus. Airgo, a start-up, will be in no position, however ground breaking its technology, to refuse to support the EWT specifications. And an IEEE standard based on Airgo and the rump of the TGn Sync and WWise supporters would--like a putative 802.15.3a based on the contender to Intel, Freescale's Direct Sequence UWB--be redundant without major industry support. Airgo does have some big name friends still, notably its investor Nokia, which said it would not take part in a "proprietary" consortium effort, although it indicated that it thought the EWC specifications should be included in the IEEE process. Motorola, too, said it would prefer to support the conventional IEEE approach.