Intel releases its 802.11g Centrino module: The fully standards complaint, Wi-Fi certified 802.11g (and thus backwards compatible to 802.11b) mini-PCI module sells for $25 in quantities of 10,000 or more, according to the press release, and will appear in upcoming revisions to laptops from major makers. It supports WPA (Wi-Fi Protected Access); current Centrino B adapters only support WPA for manufacturers who have integrated updated drivers.

What I was told last year during the Intel launch was that businesses of a certain scale work on a three-year purchasing cycle. Dell offered their own Broadcom-based 802.11g adapter to remain competitive because companies that had decided to go with 802.11g during 2003 wouldn't be coming back to the trough to buy more machines until 2006, and Dell would have left that business on the table.

Intel is finally able to belly up to the bar, but they really did leave a market moment open for Broadcom and others. Companies that have standardized on Broadcom's solution, even indirectly via Dell or others, won't now switch in their 2004 cycle for new machines to Intel's module because that would mean that they would have heterogenous hardware to support.

The flip side is that many companies waited on 802.11g: the enterprise versions of G access points didn't start shipping until long after the first consumer wave, and thus there was no benefit to having G.