Intel to debut WLANs at London Fashion Week

Intel is to demonstrate what it says is the first wireless local area network (WLAN)in the UK, built to the 802.11a standard, at London Fashion Week, 17-20 February.

The company will stream live coverage to handheld devices over the WLAN to demonstrate "the future of wireless networking," using the US standard 802.11a.

Currently, the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) is backing the rival HiperLAN2 standard for use in Europe.

Both standards offer data speeds of as high as 54Mbps, with HiperLAN2 operating in the 5GHz range of radio frequency. 802.11a operates between 5GHz and 6GHz.

Intel has obtained a one-week licence from the Radiocommunications Agency to operate the streaming demonstration during London Fashion Week.

Evelien Wiggers, of analyst group IDC, said that so long as 802.11a WLANs comply with the HiperLAN2 requirements of having transmission control protocol (TCP) and dynamic frequency selection (DFS) functionality, then it could be legal in Europe.

"The two can co-exist so long as 802.11a complies with European standards, as the US version of 802.11a is not so tough," she told vnunet.com. "Europe will still promote HiperLAN2 heavily."

Intel could not be reached for comment.

According to US research group Cahners Instat, the adoption of WLANs is set to explode, with an end-user market worth in excess of $4bn in 2005.

Further reading

• Communications

US Department of Energy bans Wlans

• 07 Feb 2002

• Tweet  
• Facebook  
•  
•  
• Send to  

• Topics
• Communications