The Wi-Fi Alliance and the Wireless Gigabit (WiGig) Alliance announced today that they will merge the two entities into one organization that will operate under the Wi-Fi Alliance.
The Wi-Fi Alliance and WiGig Alliance have been collaborating for more than two years on the WiGig Alliance’s work to develop an interoperability certification for 60 GHz products.
Wi-Fi Alliance President and CEO Edgar Figueroa said that the 60 GHz technology has been an important highlight in the Wi-Fi Alliance’s certification roadmap for some time.
“Combining the expertise of Wi-Fi Alliance and WiGig Alliance will deliver a terrific user experience with 60 GHz solutions and will help ensure that a full range of interoperable WiGig solutions reach the market as quickly as possible,” Figueroa said.
WiGig offers short-range multi-gigabit connections for applications ranging from high-definition WiGig Display Extensions, to peripheral connectivity and I/O cable replacement such as WiGig Serial Extension, WiGig Bus Extension and WiGig SDIO Extension.
Early 60 GHz implementations based on the WiGig specifications are entering the market now, and ABI Research forecasts that by 2016, annual shipments of devices with both Wi-Fi and WiGig technology will reach 1.8 billion.
The first Wi-Fi Alliance interoperability certification program for WiGig products is targeted to launch late this year.
Under the terms of the agreement announced today, the organizations will enter a period of diligence and planning, with the intent to complete transition of both the technology development activity and WiGig assets to Wi-Fi Alliance by the middle of 2013.
