MANHASSET, N.Y. — After falling well short of the 75 percent vote needed to set an IEEE standard, prospects look grim for Intersil Corp.'s proposed high-rate, 54-Mbit/second wireless LAN technology within the 2.45-GHz band. In fact, a motion from the floor of the IEEE meeting, where Intersil's technology received 55 percent of the vote, called for the 802.11g project authorization request (PAR) to be pulled from consideration.
Meanwhile, Texas Instruments Inc.'s proposed solution for high-rate operation — itself ousted from IEEE contention earlier this year — was being actively demonstrated at the Comdex exhibition in Las Vegas by LinkSys Group Inc., in a unit featuring TI's ACX100 chip set. The combination of the IEEE's negative reaction, TI's chip set demo and the snowballing momentum of Atheros Communications Inc.'s AR5000 5-GHz WLAN solution pushed Intersil's shares down almost 12 percent by the close of market Wednesday (Nov. 14). Intersil is readying a 5-GHz, 802.11a WLAN solution, and Atheros' is already shipping.
Vote postponed
At the IEEE meeting, a vote on whether to lower the 75 percent vote requirement to 50 percent to kill the 802.11g PAR — a move that would almost certainly kill the effort — was postponed until Friday.
A second round of voting on Intersil's proposal will take place Thursday.
An Intersil spokesman reaffirmed the company's position that its proposal is most suited to bringing high-speed capability to the 2.45-GHz band, while providing a path to the 5-GHz 802.11a standard.
