Finally, the agony this long suffering group has suffered is about to be ended. What is now the Orinoco line of wireless products began life at NCR as WaveLAN, one of the first Wireless LAN product offerings. In succession, NCR was bought by AT&T (and later spun back out), with the WaveLAN product line being transferred to Lucent. Lucent recently spun out its electronic components group as Agere, and the Orinoco product line went with Agere. Now the more visible parts of the Orinoco product line are being sold to Proxim, a company oriented entirely around Wireless LANs (and derivatives).
With this announcement, Agere refocuses on providing only components and subassemblies. "Agere will retain its 802.11/Wi-Fi chips, modules, and cards business, representing the majority of Agere's total Wi-Fi business." From this, it would appear that Orinoco cards and 802.11b modules will be made by Agere, but sold at retail by Proxim under the Orinoco brand along with the Orinoco Residential Gateways (RG-xxxx products), access points (enterprise), and all the outdoor products.
The joy is not all one-sided; Proxim is gaining one of the better-known brand names in the WLAN market, and a considerable market within enterprises. In very large enterprises, where good support is prized almost above all, the Orinoco product line has done well.
Busy times at Proxim, still busy assimilating the product lines and personnel of Western Multiplex, completing that merger just a few months ago.
In Other Broadband Wireless Internet Access news...
- XO Communications Enters Chapter 11 - The Wall Street Journal reports that XO Communications (www.xo.com) has at last filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy. XO was the last of the big four Broadband Wireless Internet Access companies that made such a big spash in the late 1990's to enter bankruptcy. The others were Winstar, Advanced Radio Telecom (ART), and Teligent.
- Pocket PC With Integrated 802.11b Debuts - The WSJ also reports that Toshiba has announced the Pocket PC e740, claiming it to be "The Industry’s First PDA with Integrated Wi-Fi". It's impressive that in addition to the built-in 802.11b, the e740 also comes with slots for Secure Digital (SD) and Compact Flash (CF) expansion modules. This is the first of what will undoubtedly be many, many announcements of PDAs with integral 802.11b capability. I think PDA's will quickly become the majority of the equipment that is used at Public Wireless Access Points, accelerating the demand for PWAP coverage (see my weblog for 6/14/2002). Detailed information on the e740 is at http://cdgenp01.csd.toshiba.com/content/product/pdf_files/detailed_specs/pocketpc_to_e740.pdf.
- Chipset For 80211b SD Cards - In a related development to the item directly above, on June 10, 2002, SyChip announced that they will soon offer a chipset that will make possible 802.11b Secure Digitital (SD) cards. To put this in perspective, many PDA vendors, including those using Palms, have standardized on SD as the expansion card slot of choice. This announcement presages the possibility of easily adding 802.11b to many PDAs. Thanks for the heads-up on this development to Glenn Fleishman (80211b.weblogger.com) and 802.11 Planet (www.80211-planet.com). More information on SyChip's announcement is at http://www.sychip.com/PUB/WLAN%20press%20release%20060902%20v1.pdf.
- IEEE 802.11G Working Group May Propose 4 Non-overlapping Channels - On the IEEE's 802.11 page, Task Group G (http://grouper.ieee.org/groups/802/11/Reports/tgg_update.htm), it states: 4 Channels in the 2.4GHz Band - Calls will discuss the feasibility of adding additional channel specification that would allow the use of 4 non-overlapping channels in the 2.4 GHz band instead of the current 3. This would be a big win for all concerned. 802.11b's occupied channel is 22 MHz. The total width of the 2.4 GHz band is 83.5 MHz. Currently there are only three non-overlapping channels specified for 802.11b (Channels 1, 6, and 11). The channel width of 802.11g using OFDM 20 MHz, so it's possible to cram in an extra channel and still stay within the band.
8:26:06 AM 
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