The Institute of Electrical Engineering is meeting to try and develop a new standard for high speed Wireless Local Area Networks that would replace wired Ethernet networks with wireless connections more than twice as fast, at 25Mbps. The current Wireless LAN standard is restricted to a speed of 2Mbps, and was standardized last year under the IEEE 802.11 committee, and the members want to further enlarge the market for Wireless LANs that are currently restricted to applications in warehousing and medical environments, into offices where higher data transfer rates are essential. There are two groups reviewing proposals from a number of wireless companies. Lucent Technologies Inc, NEC Corp and BreezeCom Inc are proposing systems use 5.2GHz radio frequencies, as compared to the current 2.4GHz, and with data rates up to 25Mbps. The second set of proposals is based around extending 2.4GHz WLANS up to 10Mbps, the same speed as wired Ethernet. Products based on the new standards are expected by the year end.
