"There are some unique characteristics about the 60GHz band that really help in bringing a whole bunch of new use cases," said Mark Grodzinsky, vice president of marketing for 60GHz pioneer Wilocity. Some of those uses include wireless docking and uncompressed HD video streaming.

"60 GHz is also highly directional," he added. "So whereas in 2.4 and 5 [GHz] it's pretty much an omnidirectional transmission, meaning the antennas just blow energy in all directions, with 60GHz, it's very focused."

However, 802.11ad will still not represent a wholesale shift in the nature of Wi-Fi, according to Coffey.

"When you add in [802.11ad], I would see this as an island of super-high data rate present in a sea of gigabit Wi-Fi. What it does is allow you to do a massive amount of Wi-Fi offloading." The idea is that the localized but high-bandwidth 60GHz network can be used for specific, highly demanding tasks, keeping the standard 5GHz frequency free for normal use, he explained.

Devices using the 60GHz standard could begin to appear in 2014 and become more prominent in 2015. This means that the next major transition is still well over a year away - in part because 802.11ac will not be a particularly testing upgrade for most end users.