There is a downside, though: WiGig's top speed has a range of only 45 feet. This will be a problem for home users who want to, say, connect a TV in the bedroom with a router in the basement, or for a business that wants to connect all of the employees in a small office wirelessly.

Sadri mentions two different ways to overcome WiGig's range limitation, neither of which is perfect. One possibility is to set up personal area networks (PAN) for each room or section of a home or office. That way, each PAN segment could pass along the data to the segment in the next room or section, although latency would increase each time the signal is relayed.

The other approach is a little more old-fashioned and involves installing gigabit Ethernet cables as a backbone for several WiGig transmitters placed in strategic locations throughout the building -- a solution that's likely more feasible for small businesses than it would be for home users because it requires running cables behind walls.

And, of course, WiGig will require a new generation of Wi-Fi routers and receivers that use the 60GHz transmission band. Armed with tri-band radios, these devices will also be able to operate on the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands for interoperability with today's Wi-Fi equipment.

By the end of the year, Sadri expects four semiconductor companies, which he declined to name, to produce samples of WiGig's reference design chip for a new generation of wireless electronics. The needed chips should be in full production in 2012, he says.