WiGig Thumps, Wifi Dumps, SiBEAM Jumps, and Amimon Slumps

WiGig guys have announced a specification for a HAN with speeds up to 7Gb/sec over distances of less than 10  meters using the 60GHz.

The thumping big news is WiGig's joint announcement with the WiFi guys that the WiGig spec will become part of the WiFi family.

The immediate implications are:

• WiFi Dumps the 802.11 process. WiGig is the first full specification that WiFi will certify that does not have a SDO backing.--before today WiFi only took stuff from 802.11. WiFi seems not want to wait until 2015 for the IEEE to finish their 600GHz project.
  
• SiBEAM Jumps to WiGig and tries to save face by announcing a never-to-be-seen-and-soon-to-be-forgotten dual mode (WirelssHD/WiGig) chip--seems to be a smart move if they have the cash to switch.
  
• Amimon Stumped but  continues to do what it is doing (500K chips so far--so what) and are going it alone--right, this should last as long as they have VC money to spend.

This is a lot excitement for a technology that will replace a $10 cable with with $150 box+2 $10 cables.

60GHz goes into hiding until 2015

According to this report by iTWire, the IEEE working group 802.11ad "has just started to hear proposals and so we expect it to be 2-3 years to a draft standard…Our expectation is that the years for 60GHz commercialisation will be 2012 to 2015 and beyond."

This aligns quite nicely with ABI Research study of nearly two million 60 GHz chipset shipments in 2015.

HAN Fan is thinking that there is no need to follow 60GHz for the next two years. This makes HAN Fan sad.

The good news, is somebody (NICTA) is thinking of a betterdifferent use for 60Ghz.

"What Sibeam [WirelessHD] has done is focus on HDMI cable replacement. ... Replacing a cable that you only have to install once with wireless does not make a lot of sense"

NICTA thinks 60GHz makes sense "when you want to send a video from your mobile to you TV"

Too many players new "Wireless Video Connectivity Report" study shows

Checkout the alphabet soup, (Bluetooth, UWB, IEEE 802.11, and 60 GHz. TransferJet, Wireless USB, WirelessHD, Wi-Di, WHDI, WiGig, and High Speed Bluetooth) from a new 2010 Study on
"Wireless Video Connectivity Report", by Research and Markets.

Not sure how quickly they will converge on a solution. And why is there no mention of powerline solutions.

More on The wireless HD format wars

Over at the Siteroller Blog there is a great summary of where we are in the the wireless HD format wars.

"Despite promises that this would soon be standard and inexpensive (up to $100 for the feature), it's been a tough trip. Until recently it wasn't available at all in North America, and now it is mostly found using stand alone devices such as GefenTV's streaming devices."

Siteroller then goes on to summarize the different technologies and vendors and who is winning and loosing. But in the end his says.

 So, it's still too early to say anyone's really winning.
But the sooner these become reality, the better!     

New HAN Standards War: Gbps Wireless

Standards wars are so much fun to watch, and we have one in our little old HAN world:

"cable replacement Gbps wireless which wants to do whole house video"

Notwithstanding previously noted previously expressed views on cable replacement, wireless is useful for some HAN applications (actually WiFi is very useful on a notebook PC), so lets see who are the players:

• WirelessHD
  Data rates: up to 25 Gbps (other places says 3 Gbps)
  Band: 57~67 GHz (depends on national regulation)
  Bandwidth: ~1GHz
  
  
• WiGig
  Data rates: up to 7 Gbps
  Band: 60 GHz
  Bandwidth: ?
  
  
• WHDI (Wireless Home Digital Interface)
  Data rates: up to 3Gbps
  Band: 5GHz unlicensed band
  Bandwidth: 40MHz

So who is going to win for the whole house video? Not WirelessHD or WiGig as they are using 60GHz which does not go through walls; in fact it is none to happy about going through air with water vapor in it.. So WHDI  is the winner by default, right? No so fast. WHDI  uses the 5Ghz and there is a 400 pound gorilla waiting for them (we know him as 802.11n).

As for cable replacement market, please see previously expressed views.

Get the popcorn and an easy-chair, and set back and watch these technologies go nowhere slowly as the Standards Wars are waged as an aside.