Wi-Fi Alliance 'caught with pants down' says chip maker
Source: The Register
Almost all the people who make Wi-Fi silicon chips have signed up to Cisco's new wireless networking standards, CCX - but not all of them have done so willingly. We interviewed one reluctant recruit, who thinks this is the biggest threat faced by the Wi-Fi Alliance so far.
Our source is a senior executive in a semiconductor company, and made it a condition of talking to NewsWireless.net that we said nothing to reveal either his identity, nor that of the corporation he works for.
"This is Cisco's way to control the Wi-Fi standard," he said bluntly. "They have declared that their position is to give these extensions away to the people who make clients for wireless. But it's not just a simple case of them giving it to anybody who wants it."
The question which surprised this executive was that none of Cisco's rivals seem, yet, to have a strategy to respond. "We don't know whether we could choose, for example, to do a deal with Proxim, who look to be about to feel the impact before anybody else, because Proxim doesn't seem to have analysed it."
He said that it was clear that Cisco was wanting to pull out of the unprofitable client business. "Prices for Wi-Fi cards and circuits have collapsed - you can buy a PCMCIA card for a laptop for $50 in a computer store. If you want Cisco's LEAP (Lightweight Extensible Authentication Protocol) you have to spend $200 on a Cisco Aironet card."
