Enhanced Wi-Fi Gear Prices Drop

SAN FRANCISCO--Prices for wireless LAN gear that uses advanced multi-antenna technology are coming down, bringing devices with higher speed and greater range within reach of more power-hungry consumers--as long as they're comfortable with pre-standard products.

Most of the biggest Wi-Fi vendors now offer consumer access points and products that take advantage of multiple antennas on clients and routers, boosting data speed above the standard 54 mbps (megabits per second) maximum for standard Wi-Fi and in some cases extending the range of coverage.

The technologies--actually several different systems that all claim the name MIMO (multiple input, multiple output)--have multiple built-in antennas, along with features that use them. But so far these products have been expensive, with routers priced as high as $200, according to industry analysts. The gear also won't be backed by a standard until probably 2007, though they work now with existing Wi-Fi gear.

(Read PC World Senior Editor Yardena Arar's blog on this development here.)

Airgo Networks, which has offered these types of chip sets since last year and counts Belkin, Buffalo Technology, and Cisco-Linksys as customers, said it would today introduce three chip sets intended for lower-priced, performance-boosted wireless LAN equipment. The Palo Alto, California, company planned to unveil a lower-cost version of its current True MIMO chip set as well as two new chip sets, called True G and True AG, that Airgo says offer some of True MIMO's performance boost in wireless routers with list prices under $100.

More Speed, Better Range

Wireless LAN gear based on the True MIMO chip set typically delivers more than twice the real throughput of conventional 802.11g gear and gets through walls better, removing "dead spots" around most homes, says Greg Raleigh, president and chief executive officer of Airgo. Through increased chip integration, Airgo has reduced the price of True MIMO, so access points using it should have list prices between $129 and $149, down from between $149 and $199 today, he says. Lower prices on True MIMO products should appear within the next two months, he adds.

Raleigh also says that access point vendors will be able to go below $100 with boxes that use True G, a less powerful system that still gives a significant throughput boost and eliminates dead spots. The True G routers should carry list prices between $69 and $99, and client PC Cards should cost between $59 and $89, he says, adding that the products should hit the market this month. Gear made with True AG, which will work with both the IEEE 802.11a and 802.11g standards in different radio bands, should cost only slightly more than True G products, according to Airgo.

Airgo's products divide a payload of data into multiple data streams, sent from multiple antennas, and then use digital signal processing at the destination to put the payload back together, Raleigh says. The True MIMO chip set uses three antennas, while the True G and True AG use just two. Users will see benefits even if they buy just one piece with the new technology, such as a PC Card that they use with a standard access point, he says.

Prices for advanced Wi-Fi chip sets such as Airgo's are on the way down, according to IDC analyst Celeste Crystal. An average bill for materials on a client of about $18 at the beginning of this year (compared with less than $9 for a conventional chip set) should fall to $16.34 by the end of 2005 and to $13.88 a year later, she says.

Standards War

New, less expensive chips could broaden the appeal of multiple-antenna products by lowering prices, but most average consumers won't embrace the technology until after a standards fight in the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is resolved, said Peter Jarich of Current Analysis, in Sterling, Virginia.

"I think it's going to be hard to reach the price points [that will] really make it mainstream before there's a standard," Jarich said. And besides the economies of scale and competition that will come with a final standard, the new technology will need an official Wi-Fi stamp of approval before some users will buy it, he added. Until then, the Airgo-based gear won't truly become a mass technology.

The fight in the IEEE is over 802.11n, intended as the next step in wireless LAN standards after IEEE 802.11a and 802.11g, which deliver a theoretical maximum of 54 mbps. The new standard is intended to boost the actual throughput users experience to more than 100 mbps. However, none of the proposals for the standard have garnered the required 75 percent vote in the 802.11n working group. The two main factions involved are working on compromises between their approaches, said Airgo's Raleigh.

One faction, World-Wide Spectrum Efficiency (WWISE), includes Airgo, as well as Broadcom and Motorola. Ironically, Cisco Systems, parent of Airgo customer Linksys, backs the competing TGn Sync proposal. Chip makers Atheros Communications and Intel are among the backers of the TGn Sync option.