At CTIA Wireless this week in Las Vegas, I sat down with members of the Wi-Fi Alliance to get an update on some things and see what’s new in the world of Wi-Fi.
One item of note – they’re starting to certify cell phones with 802.11n chipsets inside them – currently there are 10 models that have been certified by the Alliance that include 802.11n inside them.
Four of them are from LG – the Gisele (LS680), Aloha (LG-C710), Veri (VS750) and Aloha (VS740) – the other six are from Samsung (GT-S8500, GT-S7200, SHW-M100S, SHW-M120S, GT-S8500B and GT-S8500L).
It makes sense that smart phones will soon include 802.11n on them, especially as phones also move to 4G wireless speeds that could come close to the speeds of current 802.11b/g chipsets.
It appears that early thoughts about carriers not wanting Wi-Fi on a cell phone or smart phone were wrong – it turns out they prefer to have phones that can offload data traffic onto a Wi-Fi network when the user is in a Wi-Fi zone, easing up the carrier’s network for voice or other non-Wi-Fi traffic.
The Alliance also reported that by 2014, 90% of smart phones (about 500 million total [1]) will include Wi-Fi on them (we’re at about 50% right now).
Links:
[1] http://www.wi-fi.org/news_articles.php?f=media_news&news_id=969