WiGIG Alliance beams 7Gb/s at 60GHz

The WiGIG alliance (made up of around 30 companies including Intel and Broadcom etc) have announced that WiGIG will transmit at speeds of around 7Gb/s using the 60GHz band.

This band is either unlicensed or license exempt in many parts of the world (including the US and next year the UK and many parts of Europe).

Initially WiGIG said they'd support up to 6Gb/s, but this has since been bettered. 60GHz does not propagate well and it was envisaged that it would only be suitable for in-room use (under 10m), but new 'beam' technologies will allow greater distances to be achieved allowing for in-building use.

Though there is a WiFi specification for higher speeds (802.11AD) the technologies are seen to be complimentary and since companies like Intel sit in both camps it's likely both technologies will be integrated into WiFi chipsets.

WiFi using 802.11n is expected to support around 600Mb/s so WiGIG offers a magnitude better speeds.