Austin, TX, July 19, 2004 - The Wi-Fi Alliance today announced that it is adding several new laboratories to perform product testing for Wi-Fi certification. The Alliance anticipates that the introduction of the new labs will take place over several weeks beginning in early August 2004.
The demand for Wi-Fi certification is ever-increasing, and the addition of new test labs is necessary to help meet this demand, said Frank Hanzlik, Wi-Fi Alliance Managing Director. Adding new labs will help us reduce the likelihood of test backlogs due to new certification programs or market growth, give members more options to test products closer to their development facilities and provide members a broader range of pricing options, continued Hanzlik.
As the needs of our membership evolve, the new labs will offer us the opportunity to add more testing facilities in other areas of geographical interest to the Alliance, Hanzlik added.
Wi-Fi certification testing is currently conducted by Agilent Technologies, which operates Interoperability Certification Labs in Europe, Asia and North America. Agilent will continue to provide testing services for the Alliance in addition to the new labs. Agilent continues to be a valued Wi-Fi Alliance partner and an important element of our certification program, said Hanzlik.
There are several locations for the new labs, including Spain, Germany and Korea. The labs primary function is to test products against a bed of Wi-Fi CERTIFIED™ products. This testing verifies that the features and functions of tested products support the 802.11 a/b/g standards.
A list of the current Wi-Fi certification testing laboratories and their locations is below:
ADT | Taiwan |
Agilent | USA, Japan, Taiwan, UK |
CETECOM | Spain |
NSTL | Taiwan, USA |
SGS | Japan, Korea, Taiwan |
TUV | Japan, Germany, USA |
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About the Wi-Fi Alliance
The Wi-Fi Alliance (formerly WECA) is the global Wi-Fi organization that created the Wi-Fi brand. A nonprofit organization, the Alliance was formed in 1999 to certify interoperability of IEEE 802.11 products and to promote them as the global, wireless LAN standard across all market segments.
The Wi-Fi Alliance has instituted a test suite that defines how member products are tested to certify that they are interoperable with other Wi-Fi CERTIFIED™ products. These tests are conducted at independent laboratories.
Membership in the Wi-Fi Alliance is open to all companies that support the IEEE 802.11 family of standards. The Wi-Fi Alliance now comprises over 200 members from the worlds leading companies. These companies offer over 1,250 Wi-Fi CERTIFIED™ products. For more information, please visit www.wi-fi.org.
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Press and analyst contact:
C. Brian Grimm
Wave Communications
for Wi-Fi Alliance
910.686.0870
briang@wavecoms.com
