WiGig industry support grows as ZTE joins as contributor

CHINA: ZTE, one of China’s flagship telecoms equipment and services suppliers to the world market, has joined the Wireless Gigabit (WiGig) Alliance as a contributor in a move that emphasises the significant industry momentum now backing the world’s most important short-range wireless standard.

WiGig technology development is paving the way for throughput up to 7 Gbits/sec, ten times faster than today's 802.11n devices. It will utilize the 60-GHz spectrum, a long way away from the crowded 2.4-GHz and 5-GHz frequencies used by the current generation of 802.11a/b/g/n devices.

ZTE joins an impressive list of members representing the industry’s top chipmakers and consumer electronics manufacturers from around the world. Other recent WiGig Alliance joiners include the latest BOD member Huawei, and Allegro, LGE and Silicon Image as the contributors.

Sun Qingbo, GM, Standards and Preresearch Department of ZTE, said: “We are very pleased to join WiGig Alliance because we believe WiGig technology has a bright future that will provide a very promising short-range communication solution for the industry. ZTE has a very broad product range, from cell-phones and tablets, to conference terminal and set-top boxes. I think it will be fantastic if WiGig technology can be adopted on all these products. I am certain there are many companies that share the same vision as us.”

News of the increasing industry support comes hot on the heels of the WiGig Alliance’s announcement in December that it has completed all necessary components to define the first ever multi-gigabit wireless docking specification. It has also recently hosted the first ever interoperability test event, and received ITU-R recognitions.

“WiGig Alliance continues to gather additional industry momentum with product developments moving forward at great pace,” said WiGig Alliance president and chairman, Dr. Ali Sadri. “ZTE will complement our existing members list in advancing the WiGig technology to new usages in multi-gigabit communications. I am confident that WiGig will soon become the world’s most important multi-gigabit wireless technology found in many products. We are going to see a real shake up for the industry.”

The WiGig Alliance is calling for even more developer involvement in the creation of the world’s first unified specification for multi-gigabit wireless docking. Creation and publication of the specification is set to revolutionize wireless networking by enabling a broad range of advanced uses, including wireless docking and connection to displays between personal computers, consumer electronics and PC, CE, handheld devices.