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We’ve been seeing wireless 802.11n products for so long now, its been easy to forget that what we’ve been using are the pre-certified units.  From now on 802.11n is officially approved by the IEEE standards group.  The final standard will be published by the group in mid-October, just in time for all those new Windows 7 laptops.

Wireless n actually started development back in 2002, but Atheros and Broadcom both had competing formats for what was then Pre-N.  Sine then we’ve seen Draft N, which is the most prevalent.  These Draft N products should work with the final version of 802.11n, which features theoretical speeds of 300Mbps.  That speed is six times the maximum speed of out current 802.11g, which is quite impressive.  The new standard also has a much longer range, as you may have witnessed already with current wireless n routers.

While the approval of the standard obviously has not stopped manufacturers from including the standard in most, if not all current laptops and netbooks, it’s great to know it is finally approved.  Now it can finally be on its way to finally becoming a more widely used standard, if only routers using 802.11n would come down in price a bit.  The next step is obviously improving our broadband speeds to reach the theoretical peak of the new standard, though that’s likely going to take some time.

Read [Electronista]