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Broadcom ships 3 million 802.11g chipsets: Jeff Abramowitz, senior director of marketing, said in an interview, "Industry transition from b to g is happening very rapidly." In the next 30 days, he said, Broadcom would announce deals by several PC makers to use Broadcom's chipset. Having been an early adopter helps Broadcom outflank Intel, Abramowitz said, because Intel's Centrino isn't yet 802.11g-based. That support would come later this year in new hardware.
I confirmed with Abramowitz that Broadcom's technology is ready for both WPA (Wi-Fi Protected Access) and 802.11i: he noted that the chips support AES, the more advanced encryption algorithm that will be adopted in 802.11i. Abramowitz, like many in the industry, are looking forward to WPA since it will finally offer a reliable first line of defense. "WPA will have a marked effect on wireless LANs into the business enviroment," he said.
Abramowitz pointed out that Broadcom's 802.11g chipset is all in CMOS, which is the least expensive integrated circuit manufacturing technique. Their goal, like several other firms, is to put the whole shebang into a single chip, which reduces power requirements and signal loss while opening up new equipment into which a chip could fit and be powered.
Other News
Intel preps its Centrino launch with Wi-Fi focus: A great roundup of the wireless issues surrounding the Centrino launch. As the article notes, the Wi-Fi incorporated into the Centrino product is a standalone module which contains components by Philips (and also Symbol and Texas Instruments) as Intel's work was ready in time. Intel claims that integration with its processor will produce better wireless results, including lower power use. Other chipmakers have promoted the same benefit, however, without having to make the processor, too. It's absolutely clear that the Centrino campaign will produce something close to total awareness fo wireless networks for anyone who has any interest in computers. Watch for other announcements on Wednesday that will attempt to steal Intel's thunder!
Boingo announces private label service: In the next step of Boingo Wireless's evolution, they've announced a more general plan to allow companies who want to offer wISP service a private label option. Boingo tested this plan with Earthlink and Fiberlink. The company also announced that a later version of their sniffer software will detect available 2.5G cell data standards to better integrate hot spots with cell operators' offerings. Finally, a little Politburo-style interpretation of the mention of $10 million in software development: this is a boast and a threat. They're telling the world they spent $10M to get this far to make competitors like Cometa turn into cooperative partners when they realize what it takes to get the client side right.
Agere demos 802.11a/g chipset; sampling in June: The last of the big players finally releases its plans for moving forward into g. Agere, partnered with Infineon, will sample chips in June that are dual-band. (I don't go in for this a/b/g thing: g's standard fully encompasses all b encodings, so it's a/g and dual-mode not a/b/g and tri-mode.) [via SmallNetBuilder]