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WiFi goes domestic, as Sony joins WECA board

When Sony joined the PC community, it marked the time PCs become commodities. Now, Sony has stepped up to full board-level membership of the Wireless Ethernet Compatibility Alliance. Is this the end of wireless innovation?

Up till this month, Sony was just a general member of the body which gave us the name WiFi - and it has now joined Agere, Cisco, Dell, Intel, Intermec, Intersil, Microsoft, Nokia, Philips, and Symbol on the main WECA board of directors.

WECA itself has pronounced this a good thing. "As a WECA board member, Sony will participate in setting the ongoing direction of the organization's global efforts to certify and promote Wi-Fi wireless technology," said the official announcement. And the chairman of WECA, Dennis Eaton, said:

"Sony's addition to the WECA board of directors is an important step in the further deployment of Wi-Fi technology into the consumer electronics space. WECA faces several challenges as the deployment of Wi-Fi is expanded beyond the traditional wireless LAN applications."

Exactly what these "challenges" are, Eaton didn't say. He did make encouraging noises: "The WECA board views Sony's track record of leadership in consumer electronics as a valuable resource in helping WECA traverse these challenges and bring this very beneficial technology to an even greater audience," but it isn't clear why this is such a breakthrough. There is this, though: "Sony also represents WECA's first board member that is headquartered in Asia."

We're waiting for WECA's response to our questions. But one key matter which applies in Asia more than in the rest of the world, is the need for new IP addresses. Asia is expected to go to IP version 6 far sooner than the West would have done - and with the arrival of IPv6 comes the possibility of having real IP addresses for individual phones.

That would make the reality of mobile phones with incoming voice calls over the Internet, very real.

So no: it doesn't mean that Sony marks the end of innovation in WiFi. It does mean that WiFi has become a commodity product in one sense - Sony doesn't get involved in fast-moving markets where the technology changes rapidly. But it might mean that the innovation moves from the chip level, to the organisational level.