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Cisco foresees bleak future for 5 GHz wireless LANs in Europe

Two of the biggest suppliers of business "wireless LAN" systems have placed very different bets on the question of which technology is going to get European approval first, when current 802.11b WiFi becomes obsolete.

While Intel is betting its future on seeing the IEEE's 802.11a standard ratified quickly, its main rival as a supplier of wireless LANs, Cisco, thinks that future could be some way off in Europe, and has decided to bet on a newer technology, the 802.11g standard.

Both the new standards offer far faster networking, at speeds (typically) around 20 megabits per second. That compares with a typical throughput under 11b Wifi, of less than 5 megabits on a nominal 11 megabit link.

The main proponent of 11a or Wifi-5, is Proxim, which is staking considerable amounts on the theory that it will be able to sell 11a even before it gets ETSI approval. Proxim, like Intel and Cisco, focuses almost entirely on enterprise WLAN, and has no plans to launch 11a into the home or small business sectors, for now.

But sceptics say that ETSI is likely to push for American concessions on a rival technology, the High-performance Lan or Hiperlan II standard, before it allows 11a networks in Europe.

Cisco has said that its main reason for going for 11g is that it uses the same frequency spectrum as 11b, which is widely approved - and because it will be easier and cheaper to upgrade from 11b to 11g.

But it is also clear that the company thinks the approval process for 11a may face a rough ride.

Intel, which was unable to comment by the time this piece went up, has some experience of European comms standards, and is entitled to be bullish.

It isn't many years since the silicon giant tackled European comms laws head-on, in the modem business. At that time, separate approval had to be granted for modems in each country they were likely to be used in, and it was technically illegal to use a modem that didn't have BABT approval in the UK - and it was vastly expensive to get such approval in more than one country. Intel tackled the problem head-on by building laptop modems which used Flash memory to hold the country-specific performance variations, and persuaded all European authorities to adjust their requirements to permit this.

The important advantage of 11g over 11a is simple enough; if you have a laptop that talks to the current WiFi access points which are widespread today, you'll still be able to access the new 11g access points. So older computers and PDAs won't be made instantly obsolete. This is particularly important if the computer has its wireless adapter built-in - and most top-range model notebook PCs do have this.

Silicon designer company Synad hopes to solve the problem later this year, when it ships a wireless card that works on both 11b and 11a - at both 2.4 GHz and at 5 GHz frequencies. But products using their silicon won't be common this year.

There is another advantage of 11g; the lower frequency will be able to reach further. Estimates of how powerful 11a WiFi-5 access points will reach vary; Proxim reckons they'll be compatible with WiFi, but Cisco thinks 11a is more likely to have a range of about a third of the 2.4 GHz devices. That will mean a lot more money having to be spent to find out new sites for access points, and a lot more access points needed, thinks Martin Cook, Business Development Consultant for Cisco UK.

But there may be other issues.

It does seem that there are unknowns about 11a; sources disagree wildly about whether it will be able to pack more users into a small area than the channel-based 11b technology. Already, WiFi networks are starting to overlap, meaning that some users are finding no vacant channels when they want to set up their networks in city centres.

We'll follow this issue up in a forthcoming news report. For now, it looks disappointingly likely that WiFi-5 speeds will not be available to home users for at least a year, even using 11g technology; and maybe, 11a itself won't be shipping to home users in Europe for another year after this one ends.