Digital Home Thoughts: WiGig Promises Really Fast Wireless

"Most likely you've never heard of the WiGig wireless standard created by the Wireless Gigabit Alliance. If you haven't, that's OK because today the group is announcing the WiGig version 1.0 specification, which they hope will become implemented in home networking gear as early as the first quarter of 2010. So why should you care? We've got dual-band 802.11n now, right? Well, because WiGig is 10 times faster than 802.11n, with transfer rates up to 7Gbps, and is backwards compatible with 802.11b/g/n."

Alexander Grundner at eHomeUpgrade picked up on a press release for the Wireless WiGig Alliance that promises products by...well, the press release does not actually say when WiGig products will be available, and neither does the WiGig website - only that they will operate in the 60 GHz band, at speeds of 1 Gbps to over 6 Gbps. Might sound a bit like vaporware, but with a Board of Directors that includes such leading technology companies as Broadcom, Dell, Intel, Microsoft, NEC, NVIDIA and Samsung Electronics it seems reasonable to expect real world products eventually. A good question might be: "If you are planning an 802.11n implementation, will you wait for WiGig?"