Stuart Corner
Sunday, 24 September 2006 15:10
Business IT -
Technology
Page 1 of 2
The IEEE Standards Association Standards Board (SASB) will replace all officers of the group working on the 802.20 broadband wireless standard in a bid to break a deadlock that has stalled progress since June.
The new group will be able to continue where the old one left off in moving the proposed technology to become a standard, or consider alternative technology.
On 8 June SASB chair, Steve Mills, issued a statement saying that the board had "directed that all activities of the 802.20 Working Group be temporarily suspended...until 1 October 2006. Consequently, the 802.20 plenary in July 2006 and the interim in September 2006 are cancelled." Even before the June problems, 802.20 was well behind schedule. IEEE planned to have the standard in place by the end of 2004.
The SASB's plan to get things moving also tightens requirements for disclosure of affiliations after it was earlier revealed that one group member had been working as a paid consultant to one of the companies, Qualcomm, pushing its technology for incorporation into the standard.
The SASB says that, after considering input from IEEE 802.20 working group participants and a cross section of other interested parties, it concluded that the initiatives were required "to safeguard the standards development process and ensure that consensus on an IEEE 802.20 standard can be reached and that the standard can receive IEEE approval."
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