One factor in WiGig's favor is the movement to integrate it with Wi-Fi. A faster version of the IEEE 802.11 standard using the 60GHz band is also under development now, and chip makers and the alliance are already talking about WiGig as part of a "tri-band Wi-Fi" technology that would include 60GHz on top of the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands already used for 802.11a, b, g and n. The idea is that, as users of the tri-band system move farther from an access point, their connection could step down to the slower, longer-range standards.

Intel, Broadcom and Atheros all hope to make WiGig an extension of Wi-Fi. They are also involved in the IEEE task group for the upcoming 60GHz standard, called 802.11AD. That group is in the early stages of developing its new standard. The Wi-Fi Alliance industry group, which certifies products based on the 802.11 family of standards, says WiGig seems complementary to Wi-Fi and that as it matures there may be opportunities for the Wi-Fi and WiGig groups to collaborate.

"We don't call it Wi-Fi, because it's not Wi-Fi yet, but it has a lot of similar properties," said Jason Trachewsky, Broadcom's representative to the WiGig Alliance and a senior technical director at Broadcom. "A faster, lower-latency Wi-Fi interface is something that would be of great interest over a lot of our product lines," he said.

Intel plans eventually to slide WiGig into its Wi-Fi chipsets in place of My Wi-Fi, a PAN (personal-area network) technology it announced last year. My Wi-Fi splits a Wi-Fi client in a laptop or other device into two virtual clients. One can connect to a traditional Wi-Fi LAN through an access point while the other sets up peer-to-peer links with other devices, such as consumer electronics products. As My Wi-Fi evolves to 60GHz, the traditional Wi-Fi side can remain the same, said Ali Sadri, director of wireless PAN and millimeter-wave standardization at Intel. Sadri is also chairman and president of the WiGig Alliance.

Atheros also sees WiGig as a potential fit for its own peer-to-peer Wi-Fi technology, called Direct Connect, and possibly as a foundation for a faster Bluetooth standard, said Atheros CTO Bill McFarland. He expects to see WiGig certify its own products before the 802.11AD standard is complete. It took about five years for the 802.11n standard to be completed, he pointed out.