Tech giants band together for faster Wi-Fi

Digital industry players including Intel, Microsoft, Dell and Panasonic are forming an association to create a faster wireless technology for sending large files around the home. The new WiGig service will be more than 10 times faster than Wi-Fi and deliver HD video from computers and set-top boxes to TV sets. WiGig will have a shorter range than Wi-Fi. It will work within a room and perhaps extend to an adjacent room.

There are several technologies competing in this space, for instance WirelessHD, which is designed specifically to link set-top boxes and Blu-ray players to TV sets. WHDI, invented by Israel’s Amimon, uses Wi-Fi technology to do the same thing. Both WiGig and WirelessHD use the 60GHz frequency band, a largely unused space in the airwaves that allows for extremely high transfer speeds at short ranges. WiGig will be capable of transfers at six gigabits per second, roughly fast enough to transmit the contents of a DVD in 15 seconds.