IEEE suspends 802.20 group

By Steve Malone

Posted on 21 Jun 2006 at 10:30

The IEEE has suspended the operation of a committee to establish the 802.20 wireless standard after it was revealed that the Group's chairman Jerry Upton had a 'relationship' with Qualcomm, one of the major players in WiFi technologies.

According to a report in EE Times, the suspension of the Group was forced upon the IEEE after Intel and Motorola threatened to file formal complaints over the methods used by Upton. The companies alleged that Upton has handled the draft proposals with a bias towards Qualcomm and Kyocera.

The 802.20 Mobile Broadband Wireless Access (MBWA) Working Group was established in 2002 to develop a standard method of building low-cost always-on broadband wireless networks. A draft standard was published at the beginning of this year. However, all work is now been put on hold while the IEEE investigates whether Qualcomm has unduly influenced the group.

This is not the first time that Qualcomm is alleged to have tried to influence the 802.20 group. According to EE Times, Qualcomm made at least three efforts to influence the Group to vote down a proposal for an orthogonal frequency-division modulation-based standard by Flarion. In the end Qualcomm bought Flarion for $600 million last August.

The suspension is effective from last Thursday (15 June) until 1 October. As a result an 802.20 plenary meeting in July and an interim meeting in September will both be cancelled.