Standards Sleight-of-Hand

Well, the IEEE has done it again!

There once was a time when rational, intelligent, well-meaning professionals converged to discuss and agree upon a common platform for interoperable wireless products. Ever since 802.11g though, the conference room has turned into a battle
zone, full of end-runs, alliances, oneupmanship, and deception.

Citing irreconcilable differences,
the Ultra Wideband (UWB) task group (802.15.3a) disbanded without arriving at a harmonious standard. Deferring to market forces, the competing camps (OFDM-based MBOA, and the pulse shifting direct sequence) decided to "take it outside" where I'm certain, chaos will reign. In my opinion, this does not bode well for either camp in a time when there are plenty of overlapping "standards" willing to address any potential application and where the customer base (OEM AND consumer) are increasingly wary of "pre-"anything.

Meanwhile,
the opposing camps in the high datarate 802.11n session (TGn Sync and WWISE) reached agreement by adopting a last-minute third entry to the fold, the Enhanced Wireless Consortium (EWC). Can you say "mutual fear?" Meanwhile, Airgo has been shipping Airgo-based products for over a year and has several iterations of production-grade product under their belts. Will experience trump consensus in 11n? We'll just have to wait and see. Minutes (it seems) after the announcement, numerous semiconductor companies (Broadcom, Atheros) trumpeted "pre-N" silicon ready to rock and roll to those same wary customers...

Andy Backs Me Up

"I wouldn't bet on it.", said Andrew Viterbi, referring to the coming WiMAX explosion.
The Qualcomm founder and wireless visionary commented to an audience at the IEEE Radio and Wireless Symposium that it would take government backing for WiMAX to gather wide acceptance. He cited economics, not technology, as the fly in the ointment.

Mr. Viterbi had previously made similar comments last October, when he suggested that the total market size was at least an order of magnitude smaller than what the current pundits were predicting.
In the past, I've made similar observations, though I don't get the press that Andy can ;-)

At least I'm in good company.