Centrino adds 802.11g

Intel has confirmed that its Centrino chip bundle will support the 802.11g wireless standard by the end of the year.

The company had originally planned combined 802.11a, b and g products for the middle of next year, but brought the date forward because the standards are progressing more quickly than expected.

An Intel spokesman told vnunet.com: "With the 802.11g specification coming together and interoperability forums and standards efforts coalescing later this year, we intend to be in production with an 802.11b/g solution in the fourth quarter of this year."

The 802.11g standard offers 54Mbps Wi-Fi connectivity over the 2.4GHz spectrum and is backwards compatible with 802.11b systems.

The Wi-Fi Alliance, which organises interoperability testing between manufacturers, says it expects to have 802.11g products on the market within weeks of the final Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers standard being announced, which is likely to be in June rather than later, as previously expected.

Intel has also put back the date for introducing combined 802.11a and b products to the third quarter of the year.

The company launched the Centrino chip bundle for extended use mobile computing at its Developer Forum in February. It consists of a low power Pentium 4 chipset and wireless bundle.

At the launch of Centrino, Intel committed to integrating the latest wireless technology to the chip bundle.

As long as Centrino sticks to the standard about to be ratified this will work, observed Michael Wall, analyst with Frost and Sullivan.

"It's not a good idea to start too early before the final certifications have been completed. However, if they stick to a reasonable timetable they should be fine - the danger is starting too early and getting it wrong," he said.

802.11g products are already available, but problems with interoperability have caused most vendors to hold off on releasing anything.

But a report earlier this month by researchers Dell'Oro Group found 802.11g products already accounting for 16 per cent of the market revenue and 17 per cent of shipments.

802.11b products currently account for 81 per cent of the market.

Separately, US Robotics will ship its 802.11g Wireless Turbo family of products in July, which will allow users to send and receive data at up to 100Mbps.

The company claims that its Accelerator Technology can deliver data throughput nearly double that of other 802.11g products, by making the most out of network capacity by placing all the speed on a single channel.

Each is compatible with all 54Mbps 802.11g, 22Mbps and 11Mbps 802.11b wireless devices, to allow each one to connect at the fastest speeds possible.

The Turbo range includes an access point and router (£99.99), multifunction access point (£119.99), PCI adaptor (£59.99) and PC card (£59.99).