Nokia Joins WWiSE to Support its Wi-Fi IEEE 802.11n Proposal



DALLAS -/11 March, 2005 - Wi-Fi Technology News/- The World Wide Spectrum Efficiency (WWiSE) consortium, a group of 13 companies which developed a complete proposal for the IEEE 802.11 Task Group N (TGn), today announced that Nokia has joined the WWiSE and supports its proposal. TGn is chartered with developing a next-generation Wi-Fi standard capable of sustaining data throughput in excess of 100Mbps.

The other members of the WWiSE consortium are Airgo Networks, Broadcom Corporation, Buffalo, Conexant Systems, Inc., ETRI, Hughes Network Systems, Motorola, Ralink Technology, Realtek, STMicroelectronics, Texas Instruments, TrellisWare Technologies and Winbond Electronics.

"Nokia believes the IEEE 802.11n standard will become an important interface for offering increased connectivity from handheld devices to high bandwidth services in the home, hot-spots and in enterprise environments," said Steven Gray, Vice President and Head of Nokia Research Center USA. "We believe our expertise in power efficient air interface design, rich history with Wi-Fi, VoIP, and other enabling technologies will further strengthen the WWiSE proposal and speed the time to market for 802.11n capable handheld devices."

Nokia, as a member of WWiSE, will add to the group?s in-depth knowledge and understanding of converged Wi-Fi and cellular devices and provide its expertise in power save mechanisms. Additionally, Nokia supports WWiSE?s relevant media access control (MAC) protocol enhancements that add a limited number of extensions to the existing 802.11e MAC standard, enabling quicker roll out of 802.11n.

?We welcome the addition of Nokia to the 13 companies collaborating on the WWiSE proposal. The addition of Nokia to our consortium demonstrates additional industry support for WWiSE?s straightforward, spectrum-efficient proposal,? said Jim Zyren, WWiSE spokesperson and director of marketing, wireless networking business unit, Conexant Systems, Inc. ?We feel that our proposal can be quickly adopted as the baseline draft standard for 802.11n and are eager for the results of IEEE?s vote.?

The WWiSE proposal is one of two remaining proposals to be considered by IEEE 802.11 TGn at its meeting next week in Atlanta. At this session, one proposal could be selected as the baseline for the new standard.

WWiSE companies will offer their essential IP under RAND terms, the basic requirement for anyone wishing to participate in IEEE standards setting processes. Likewise, any company may join and support WWiSE so long as they adhere to the IEEE IP rights policies and procedures. Further information about WWiSE and the updated WWiSE proposal to IEEE 802.11 TGn may be found at http://www.wwise.org.