WiGig: what is it and when will we see it?

WiGig came up while interviewing Mano Gialusis and Pat Kannar for Dell’s Precision workstations.

Until now the technology has been shadowy. That could change. Dell’s workstations are not mainstream, but the high-end wireless technology could soon be everywhere.

Gialusis and Kannar say Dell uses WiGig as a wireless docking technology for the company’s flagship mobile workstations. So, the obvious question: is that a faster version of WiFi?

The answer isn’t simple. WiGig and WiFi are close relatives. The WiFi alliance looks after WiGig’s standards and certification.

Blazingly fast, but…

WiGig is faster than WiFi. It has speeds of up to 6 Gbps. It operates at least 50 times the speed of today’s desktop wireless standard. In theory those speeds can be boosted to 25 Gbps. In practice that means moving an HD movie between devices in less than three minutes.

There are important differences. Gialusis and Kannar say WiGig is used for different applications.

From Dell’s point of view the technology means you can walk into a room with a mobile workstation and instantly hook-up to remote screens, loud-speakers, mice, keyboards and other devices.

WiGig is mainly about media transfer.

WiGig uses different spectrum to WiFi, it operates at around 60 GHz. Higher frequencies mean shorter wavelengths. In plain English this means signals don’t extend as far, typically you only use it in a single room.

In other words, it’s faster than WiFi, but has a shorter range.

And there’s the big disappointment. Those of us who’d like to hook up fibre connections to a house full of devices won’t be able to use WiGig for the task. It’s either push conventional WiFi to its limits or run cables around the rooms.

WiGig antennae twitching

Dell’s workstations have a steerable WiGig antennae, apparently that’s important. It also makes things a little more fragile.

This goes some way to explain why WiGig isn’t called WiFi+ or something similar. The two standards are different. Although some equipment may have both, you can’t expect the two standards to interconnect.

Another issue is that there are competitors. At least two other wireless technologies are vying to fill the same niche. WiFi has its market to itself.

Dell is early to market with the technology. Most other hardware makers don’t expect to get devices to market until 2014.