Imagine being able to instantly download an HD movie in the same time it takes to order and collect your food from a take-away delivery hatch. Better still, being able simply and ‘wirelessly’ connect all your currently disconnected devices, or partly connected devices without having to pull the manual out. Taking this one step further, imagine a cable free house where all devices are wirelessly connected, TV’s, Tablets, PC’s, printers and mobile phones and able to share and pass around huge amounts of data between them all, easily and really really quickly. Sounds good?
Put that into a commercial context; imagine offloading large amounts of data that flow between pc’s and devices within, for instance, a hospital Wi-Fi network, to a separate parallel network that won’t chew up critical bandwidth nor require cables and yet deliver performance 10 times faster than a normal Wi-Fi network. So for example, a hospital MRI scan could be sent to a nearby Dell Precision Workstation for rendering and processing via this superfast network for processing. Once the MRI scan has been completed and processed, the Dell Precision Workstation can then send the results via normal Wi-Fi to a doctor’s mobile tabletin a patient’s room, saving time and overloading the hospital network.
It is called Wireless Gigabitor as we will get to know the marketing name as ‘WiGig’. Keep an eye for this new logo, as mobile device specifications will start to add WiGig alongside Wi-Fi. My own market investigation into how retail stores are marketing WiGig is in reality still pretty much low key, its just another feature in the device specification list. Most consumer have no real clue what this new technology offers.
Adoption of WiGig
Truth is that WiGig is here, during the course of 2012 more and more mobile devices such as laptops, tablets and smart phones will now have an additional specification. Expect that to spread to more devices over the near future and really impact the way we connect devices within a commercial context.
So why tell you about it? WiGig operates in the unlicensed 60GHz spectrum band, which has little interference, meaning it can offer speeds far higher than traditional Wi-Fi network, in fact up to 7Gbps (gigabits per second). The speed that WiGig operates at becomes a game changer; these speeds mean that data can shift data in a way that Wi-Fi can only dream of. Put that into context it is up to 10 times faster than today’s fastest Wi-Fi network.
Cable-free Future for Consumers & OEMs
Let’s be clear . . . WiGig is not a replacement for a Wi-Fi network. Its operating range is limited to 10 to 15 meters – a factor that may prevent it being crowned the next-generation wireless standard. It’s much shorter range reveals a far better alternative and this is really the point of my blog. This is about replacing cables and lots of them. The appeal of a cable-free future is obvious. Our desire for connected devices and fast data downloads has caused countless living room corners to resemble spaghetti wire junctions. Sound familiar?
WiGig will bring benefits to OEM’s who currently struggle with complex wiring and cabling when embedding or integrating their solution within an enclosure. WiGig ultimately can replace for example USB, HDMI, DVI and eliminate cabling. All this will be achievable as we are starting to see more and more everyday products ship with embedded Wi-Fi making it easier to connect to multiples of devices via this standard.
Learn more about Dell OEM Solutions or contact us to discuss future mobile technology that might impact your product development.
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