"The addition of Askey Computer Corp., Atheros Communications, Eumitcom, Intel Corporation, Mobilian Corp., and Xircom sends a clear message: The most important companies in technology today - its very pioneers - believe in the importance of 802.11b HR as an industry standard and of building standards-based wireless LANs," noted WECA chairman, Phil Belanger.
In August 1999, WECA founding members 3Com, Cisco Systems, Intersil, Lucent Technologies, Nokia and Symbol Technologies united to drive the adoption of one globally accepted standard for high-speed wireless local area networking: the IEEE 802.11b HR standard. Products built to the new standard operate in the 2.4 GHz radio band and transmit at a raw data rate of 11 Mbps. Unified support of this standard will facilitate the rapid deployment and adoption of these products to ensure global, broadband wireless connectivity across the enterprise, small office, public access and home markets.
About the Wireless Ethernet Compatibility Alliance
The Wireless Ethernet Compatibility Alliance (WECA) is a non-profit organization formed in 1999 to certify interoperability of Wi-Fi (IEEE 802.11b High Rate) products and to promote Wi-Fi as the global wireless LAN standard across all market segments.
WECA has defined a test suite that defines how member products are tested to certify that they are interoperable with other vendor products. An independent test lab, The Silicon Valley Networking Lab, Inc. (www.svnl.com), conducts the testing. When a product successfully passes the test, the company will be granted the Wi-Fi seal of interoperability and may display the Wi-Fi logo on that product and its corresponding collateral material. Consumers are assured that any product bearing the Wi-Fi logo will work with other Wi-Fi products.
Membership in WECA is open to all companies who support Wi-Fi, the standard for 2.4 GHz wireless LAN products, including any manufacturer that would like to submit its Wi-Fi based product for interoperability testing. WECA now comprises 42 members.
