Wi-Fi Alliance begins certification process for short-range WiFi standard WiGig, also known as 802.11ad, which supports transmission speeds of up to 8 Gbps
The superfast wireless tech hasn't caught on widely, but that could change as ordinary Wi-Fi clogs up. — Enlarge Image
Context & Ripple Effects
In 2016 the Wi-Fi Alliance put its certification stamp on WiGig (802.11ad), betting that official interoperability testing would rescue a short-range, up-to-8-Gbps standard that had struggled to find devices while conventional Wi-Fi grew congested. The subsequent record in the coverage is sobering: within a year, Intel discontinued its entire WiGig product line, keeping only VR-focused work.
The Alliance's machinery kept moving regardless — rebranding the 802.11 generations as Wi-Fi 4/5/6 in 2018, launching Wi-Fi Certified 6 in 2019, and starting Wi-Fi 7 certification in 2024 — so WiGig's fate reads less as a failure of certification and more as mainstream Wi-Fi generations absorbing the demand for speed first.
First-order effects
- Device makers gain an official interoperability benchmark for 802.11ad, letting router, laptop, and phone vendors ship certified WiGig gear with the Alliance's seal rather than proprietary implementations.
- Vendors already hedging on WiGig — Intel chief among them — face a clearer go/no-go decision now that certification lowers the risk of shipping incompatible silicon.
Second-order effects
- Chipset and router makers must split R&D between a niche 60 GHz short-range standard and the next mainstream Wi-Fi generation, and Intel's later retreat to VR-only WiGig shows which side of that split won vendor budgets.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, the Alliance functions as a certification gate whose timing effectively picks winners: standards it certifies early (Wi-Fi 6, Wi-Fi 7) reach mass adoption, while those left waiting for a congestion catalyst — like WiGig — get absorbed or abandoned by major silicon vendors.
The trend: Wireless standards bodies are certifying faster short-range technologies to relieve congested spectrum, but mainstream Wi-Fi generations keep capturing the demand first, leaving niche standards dependent on single use cases like VR.