Membership In The Wireless Ethernet Compatibility Alliance (WECA) Continues To Grow

December 8, 1999-San Jose,Ca - The recently formed Wireless Ethernet Compatibility Alliance (WECA) today announced the addition of nine new leaders from the personal computer, networking, service provider and wireless industries to its membership roster: ARtem Elsa, Fujitsu, IBM, MobileStar Network Corporation, National Data Corporation, Philips, Samsung and Telxon. These additions expand the number of WECA members from its original 6 to 26; more than quadrupling in size since its creation just three months ago.

"These new members represent some of the biggest names in technology today," noted WECA chairman, Phil Belanger. "Their involvement in WECA further legitimizes Wi- Fi as an industry standard and demonstrates the importance of building standards-based interoperable wireless LANs." Wi-Fi is the technology name for products built to the IEEE 802.11 HR standard.

WECA members have aligned to enable true multi-vendor interoperability based on Wi-Fi (802.11 HR) products by certifying that systems from different manufacturers will work together.

In August, WECA founding members 3Com, Aironet, 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 802.11 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, high speed wireless connectivity across all market segments.

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-FiTM (IEEE 802.11High Rate) wireless LAN products and to promote Wi-Fi as the standard for wireless LAN deployments across all market segments.

WECA has defined a test suite against which member products are tested to certify that they are interoperable with other vendor products. An independent test lab, The Silicon Valley Networking Lab Inc., will conduct testing. Products that successfully pass will be granted the Wi-Fi seal of interoperability.

Membership in WECA is open to all companies who support the Wi-Fi standard for 2.4 GHz wireless LAN products including any manufacturer that would like to submit their Wi-Fi based product for interoperability testing. Founding WECA sponsor companies are 3Com, Aironet, Intersil, Lucent Technologies, Nokia, and Symbol Technologies.

For more information, please visit www.wi-fi.org

 

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