Although the merger activities may delay products, the two groups working together will help product development and adoption of WiGig technology. This will make it easier for product manufacturers to use both standard Wi-Fi and WiGig in devices and make it simple for consumer to understand the different wireless capabilities since WiGig is very different.

The technology is meant for fast transfers between devices close to each other or in the same room by using 60 GHz spectrum. Expect to see wireless computer docks, easier ways to stream content from a mobile device to a large screen and other similar use cases where WiGig can replace today’s data transfer cables.

WiGig started as a 2009 initiative with bold plans to deliver products as early as 2010, but that date came and went a while ago. And recently, the WiFi Alliance has spent much effort on the new 802.11ac standard for Wi-Fi, which uses wider channels and multiple data streams to boost wireless speeds and range well beyond 802.11n products. But this market is just getting started, so 802.11ad product certifications that include WiGig functionality, originally expected for 2013, are looking like a 2014 event at this point.

According to a video interview with Dr Ali Sadri, WiGig Alliance Chair,  “Based on our existing plan we should have certification in place later this year so there’s a little slip of the programme, maybe even beginning of ‘14.”

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WiGig is an extremely high-speed, but short range, local networking technology that promises to link ultra-high-performance broadband appliances and peripherals with up to 6 gigabit per second connections. Its major limitation is the extremely high 60 GHz frequencies it uses, which limits its connections to near-line-of-sight within a single room. Still the technology has attracted a lot of interest from networking vendors from giants Intel, Dell and Broadcom to a spate of new startups like Wilocity and Nitero.

Wi-Fi Alliance marketing director Kelly Davis-Felner said the respective alliances have been collaborating for some time and as it became apparent that most device makers would integrate both Wi-Fi and WiGig technologies into their future products, it made sense for the two entities to merge.

“The technology behind WiGig is fairly different from Wi-Fi in terms of performance, range, and use cases, and doesn’t interoperate with traditional Wi-Fi,” Davis-Felner said via e-mail. “As such, we expect that the branding for the technology will be different from “Wi-Fi”.  That said, it’s important to note that many, if not most, implementations of 60 GHz technology will likely coexist alongside traditional Wi-Fi technology.”

WiGig will coexist with the Wi-Fi Alliance’s own gigabit wireless networking initiative, 802.11ac, which will work in the 5 GHz  airwaves, but it now looks like WiGig will get fully subsumed into the Alliance’s own work in the 60 GHz, based on the developing IEEE 802.11ad standard (subscription required).

Davis-Felner said the Alliance will begin its lab interoperability work this month, and it plans to begin ramping its certification program by the end of the year. WiGig isn’t the only group seeking to use the 60 GHz airwaves. Late last year Silicon Image announced plans to use the same spectrum to deliver video and gaming from handsets to televisions and other large screens inside the home using the Wireless HD standard.

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They are working on new multi-gigabit Wi-Fi chips that use the 60 GHz band and can be used to connect devices such as computer displays and peripherals. This technology is referred to as WiGig. Intel has toyed with the idea of using 60 GHz wireless for connecting servers inside data centers. Nitero is part of a crowded market and will be jostling with the likes of Silicon Image, Beam Networks, Tensorcom, Peraso Technologies and others. Beam, Peraso and Wilocity have also recently announced that their chips are ready for the world.

A lot has to happen for 60 GHz technologies to take off. For instance, they need to find willing buyers among PC makers — not an easy task given how tight-fisted most PC makers are. Of course, a vertically integrated company like Apple that can bundle these chips inside their various products — notebooks, displays and even Apple TVs — and make everything work seamlessly and jumpstart the technology’s adoption.

Mind you, this gigabit Wi-Fi technology is not to be confused with the gigabit Wi-Fi products being developed by the likes of Broadcom using the 802.11 ac standard. Several home networking companies are developing 802.11ac-based routers for the home.

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Qualcomm today launched a tri-band chip that will offer dual-band Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and a fast wireless video transfer technology all on a single piece of silicon. Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.0 capabilities have long been integrated together on a single chip, but this is the first to add support for the 60 GHz wireless frequency, which is specific to high-speed video and backed by the Wireless Gigabit Alliance. With the new chip, Qualcomm is adding the potentially final piece to the puzzle of how to best stream video content from smartphones and tablets directly to high definition television sets without interference from other wireless data protocols.

The trend of first using smartphones, and now tablets too, as a set-top box for the television became more apparent to me at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show. Why? Because dual-core processors with multiple graphics cores began to appear in handsets, giving smartphones the capability to not only record images in 1080p, but to smoothly play them back as well. The first half of this video demo I captured in January illustrates the capability using the Motorola Atrix, to play 1080p video using an HDMI cable.

Many of today’s smartphone and tablets can lose the HDMI cable by streaming such videos over traditional Wi-Fi, but as more connected devices gain and use Wi-Fi radios — Wi-Fi traffic is expected to surpass that of wired by 2015 — there is more data competing for a home network’s resources. By moving video away from the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands and into its own 60 GHz spectrum, wireless video transfers and streaming in the home should offer a consistently better experience.

In 2005, I experimented with HDTV streaming over Wi-Fi using my Xbox 360 and a computer with a TV tuner and over-the-air antenna, and found the experience to be hit or miss. I ended up adding a second router and network to my home to do exactly what the Wireless Gigabit Alliance is doing: isolate video transfer to a specific network. To do that, however, a chip like Qualcomm’s new AR9004TB will have to find its way into tablets, smartphones, and television sets. Without the same 60 GHz wireless support in an HDTV, mobile devices would have to use today’s Wi-Fi frequencies to transfer video; something they can already do today.

But televisions are ready for wireless chips according to some industry heavyweights. In an exclusive GigaOM interview last week, Reed Hastings, the CEO of Netflix, said he expects all televisions sold globally will have a built-in Wi-Fi connection. That trend has already begun with a number of television manufacturers, but it’s not a stretch for these same companies to add 60GHz support using Qualcomm’s chips in future models: Think of Apple’s AirPlay feature, but without the need for an AppleTV box. Why wouldn’t TV makers consider it, given that modern Wi-Fi network raw speeds range from 54 Mbps to 600 Mbps and the new 60 GHz frequency enables transfers ranging from 1 to 6 Gbps. That’s up to a ten-fold boost in wireless speeds; precisely what a bandwidth-heavy activity such as video transfer requires for a good experience.

So Qualcomm’s new chip could find its way into televisions or set-top boxes, but a bigger opportunity may be found in turning smartphones and tablets into the set-top box. Which scenario makes more sense: downloading a movie to watch at home and then syncing it to a mobile device to watch elsewhere or simply downloading it once on a tablet or smartphone and then beaming it wirelessly and instantly to a large screen as needed? I’d prefer option one  two, provided I had the storage capacity on my mobile device.

What may be good news for consumers getting higher-quality HD video streaming, could disappoint some chip firms that are trying to push their own versions of wireless HD video transfer, such as SiBeam, Amimon and even Celano, which is using traditional Wi-Fi frequencies instead of 60GHz for video transfer. Those companies were all hoping their technologies would win out, but in 2009 when Intel and Broadcom teamed up to form the Gigabit Wireless Alliance it looked as though the smaller startups were doomed. It still looks grim for them.

The combined chip from Qualcomm is also the first resulting from the recently announced completion of its Atheros buy and shows how serious Qualcomm is about expanding into the home market as mobile devices become the remote control and content delivery mechansims for essentially all of the connected gadgets in our lives. Perhaps it will manage to drag Google and Android — it’s bosom buddy — along for the home invasion.

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Europe’s approval of the spectrum means companies that are trying to bring 60 GHz products to consumers can sell them to all major markets. The 60 GHz band is already approved for similar use in North America, the Asia-Pacific region, Brazil, Russia, India and China. International regulatory hurdles can help kill a wireless technology, as was the case with Ultrawideband — or even with WiMAX, some argue. When governments delay or refuse to allow the use of a continuous band of spectrum that matches what other countries allow, it means the chipmaker building the wireless radio has to make a larger, more expensive chip that can tune to several frequencies, or consumer device makers have to make several versions of a product to sell in each country. All add expense.

So the EU approval is great news for those pushing the multiple standards and hoping to use the radio spectrum to deliver HD video. But as for the exact winners, it remains to be seen. A Wi-Fi standard is expected to use this spectrum as well. Several companies hoping to use it for HD video are members of the WirelessHD Alliance, including SiBeam, Broadcom, Intell, Sony and Toshiba, but a rival group, called the Wireless Gigabit Alliance, includes some of the same members and is also planning to use the spectrum for a broader wireless HD video delivery technology. It’s unclear if the products from each standard effort will be compatible. This means consumers may want to wait a bit before investing in a Blu-ray player that can stream their movies wirelessly to their TV using that spectrum.

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