Weightless, a UK-based organisation, is gaining support from industry heavyweights to accelerate the adoption of white space spectrum as a standard for short-to-mid-range machine-to-machine applications.
ARM Holdings, Cable & Wireless Worldwide, CSR and Neul have signed the Weightless "SIG Promoter Agreement," which details the efforts they will make to ensure the solution being proposed by Weightless becomes a standard and to encourage its adoption worldwide.
SIG members, who hope to have the standard defined by early next year, maintain that agreement is required for short-to-medium-range M2M to operate in the white space spectrum. They claim that Weightless technology has been optimised for this specific scenario and is delivered as a royalty-free open standard.
Of note, the Weightless SIG believes a common M2M standard would drive down the cost of white space chipsets to under $2, with a range of up to 10 kilometers and a battery life of 10 years.
Weightless CEO William Webb, said that the formation of the SIG was a very important milestone for Weightless. "Weightless has gained a solid legal framework enabling royalty-free licensing of terminal-related technology," he said in a statement. "Our plan is to rapidly grow membership from our current base of 50 high-technology companies and I would strongly encourage interested parties to join this world-changing initiative.
The CTO of chipset developer ARM, Mike Muller, said new ways need to be found to ensure wireless communication can be seamless. "This includes the next wave of connectivity across smart grids, enhanced healthcare, smart cities, asset tracking, sensors and future applications as yet unimagined," he said. "With common standards we can all benefit from intelligence embedded and connected everywhere, so the ARM team is excited about the huge potential this standard will unlock."
For more:
- see this Weightless statement
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