Wireless war hits the home front: FCC throttles up HomeRF to encourage networking competition

Someday, networking PCs and peripherals may be a workaday household chore, as mundane as removing storm windows. Cahners In-Stat Group says PC users will spend $600 million to link home devices this year and as much as $5.7 billion by 2004.

Late last month, the FCC made a few home improvements of its own, leveling the playing field in wireless home networking to foster competition between two competing standards for low-power, local wireless data transmission.

The commissioners amended the FCC's rules governing spread-spectrum wireless devices in the unlicensed 2.4 GHz band, the home frequency for the HomeRF standard known as shared wireless access protocol (SWAP) and the IEEE standard 802.11b, nicknamed Wi-Fi by its advocate, the Wireless Ethernet Compatibility Alliance, or WECA.

Until the FCC's decision, the SWAP standard was hobbled in the race to link home devices by its sluggishness in comparison to Wi-Fi. It sends data at about 1.6 Mb/s while Wi-Fi operates at speeds up to 11 Mb/s.

What distinguishes the two methods is their signaling protocols.Wi-Fi is a direct-sequence technology, sending data in a steady stream across three 30 MHz channels. SWAP uses an adapter that breaks up data into more numerous and much narrower channels and sends it across these channels in short bursts - a technique known as frequency hopping. Under prior FCC rules, frequency-hopping, spread-spectrum devices were limited to a slower speed to minimize potential interference with other devices operating in the 2.4 GHz frequency.

The rule changes - calling for 15 nonoverlapping channels, each of which can be up to 5 MHz wide rather than the previous 1 MHz - will allow wireless devices built to SWAP specifications to reach speeds of about 10 Mb/s. That will permit them to connect more than five PCs to a broadband modem, to swap large files and to distribute video and audio around a home network.

In amending its requirements for wireless networking devices, the FCC wanted to turn up the competitive heat in the market. "We agree that rule changes to permit wide band frequency hopping systems will encourage competition with direct sequence technology to the benefit of consumers," the commission wrote.

Members of the HomeRF Working Group - which includes Intel, Motorola, Siemens, Proxim and Compaq - were quick to applaud the new specifications, for which the group had lobbied since September 1998.

"The FCC's decision positively impacts the hundreds of companies working to make the future of wireless home networking a reality," said Ben Manny, chairman of the HomeRF group. "The rule change gives us what we need to develop the next generation of wireless devices."

Siemens praised the ruling because it will increase the support for telephony afforded by SWAP devices to eight handsets. Siemens manufactures mobile phones that use the 2.4 GHz band.

"We are confident that the market will welcome networks where multihandset capabilities and an extensive telephony feature set are integrated with wireless data," said Kevin Duffy, director of product management for Siemens' communication devices/digital products division.

But WECA, which boasts such high-tech hotbeds as Cisco Systems, 3Com, Lucent Technologies and Apple Computer in its membership, said allowing frequency-hopping systems to widen their channels would increase the risk of interference with other networking devices occupying the same frequency.

But the FCC apparently did not buy those arguments."We observe that most existing devices are already designed to deal with interference sources such as microwave ovens and spread-spectrum signals and usually include error-correction technology and the ability to retransmit signals as necessary to deal with interference," the commission wrote.

Analysts say the rule change was a matter of life and death for the HomeRF spec because the real driver of wireless home networking will be the ability to link computers to a fat broadband pipe and swap hefty multimedia files - things SWAP cannot do well at its present speed.

"Without this change, HomeRF had no chance to succeed in the marketplace," said Michael Wolf, senior analyst with Cahners In-Stat Group.

Currently, 20 companies have about 40 Wi-Fi networking products on the market, according to WECA. By comparison, Intel offers two SWAP-based products, and Cayman Systems sells a pair of HomeRF-certified wireless gateways.

The competing standards will probably coexist in the marketplace for some time, thanks to the FCC's decision, said Ira Brodsky, president of Datacomm Research Co. But he does not agree that the rule change was a wise decision to let the market vote for the best technology.

"They should have given both technologies very wide berths, or different bands," he said. "There's a difference between making room for competing standards and making them share the same room."