WiGig: what is it and when will we see it?

Tuesday, 10 September 2013, 12:50 pm
Column: Bill Bennett

After flying below the radar for the last five years, WiGig surfaced in Dell’s new precision workstations. Bill Bennett looks at the technology that could supplant Wi-Fi.

WiGig came up while interviewing Mano Gialusis and Pat Kannar for this morning’s story on Dell’s Precision workstations.

Although I’ve heard the term before, until now the technology has been shadowy. That could be set to change. Dell’s workstations are hardly mainstream, but this year’s high-end wireless technology could soon be everywhere.

Gialusis and Kannar told me Dell uses WiGig as a wireless docking technology for the company’s flagship mobile workstations. So, I asked the obvious question: that’s like a faster version of Wi-Fi?

The answer isn’t simple. WiGig is clearly related to Wi-Fi. The Wi-Fi alliance looks after WiGig’s standards and certification.

WiGig: blazingly fast, but…
WiGig is faster than Wi-Fi – normally with speeds of up to 6 Gbps. It operates at least 50 times the speed of today’s desktop wireless standard. In theory those speeds can be boosted to 25 Gbps. In practice that means moving an HD movie between devices in less than three minutes.

Hoever, there are important differences. Gialusis and Kannar told me WiGig is used for different applications. From Dell’s point of view the technology means you can walk into a room with a mobile workstation and instantly hook-up to remote screens, loud-speakers, mice, keyboards and other devices. WiGig is mainly about media transfer.

WiGig uses different spectrum to Wi-Fi, it operates at around 60 GHz. Higher frequencies mean shorter wavelengths. In plain English this means signals don’t extend as far, typically you only use WiGig within a single room. In other words, it’s much faster than Wi-Fi, but has a significantly shorter range.

And there’s the big disappointment. Those of us who’d like to hook up fibre connections to a house full of gadgets won’t be able to use WiGig for the task. It’s either push conventional Wi-Fi to its limits or run cables around the rooms.

Antennae twitching
Dell’s workstations have a steerable WiGig antennae, apparently that’s important. It also makes things a little more fragile.

This goes some way to explain why WiGig isn’t called Wi-Fi+ or something similar. The two standards are different. Although some equipment may have both Wi-Fi and WiGig, you can’t expect the two standards to interconnect.

Another issue is that WiGig has competitors. At least two other wireless technologies are vying to fill the same niche. Wi-Fi has its market to itself.

Clearly Dell is early to market with WiGig – most other hardware makers don’t expect to get devices to market until 2014.

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Related posts:
1. Dell’s beefy Precision workstations
2. Briefly: IDC lowers tablet forecast, new Dell kit, Blackberry woes

ENDS

© Scoop Media

Bill Bennett

Freelance journalist.

Auckland-based Bill Bennett writes technology and business stories that are directly relevant to New Zealand readers.

His emphasis is on telecommunications, but he also covers other aspects of technology and business. You can find his features in the New Zealand Herald and hear him regularly on RNZ Nine to Noon and the NZ Tech Podcast.

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