The EWC (Enhanced Wireless Consortium) bandwagon is filling up, and the 802.11n battle is becoming more interesting. STMicroelectronics, a former member of WWiSE, has joined (EWC), a group formed in October 2005 to offer a third alternative proposal for the 802.11n standard (the other two groups are WWiSE and TGn Sync). ST said it was important to ensure that features specifically designed to enhance battery life and to improve communication range were incorporated into the new standard to provide proper support for handheld devices. This is important, because at least on the surface it appeared that one of the reasons for the creation of EWC was to make sure that 802.11n would take sufficient account of the needs of laptop makers (the other two groups are dominated by hand-held and phone makers). Now that EWC is marching forward, cellular-oriented companies such as ST want to make sure that EWC takes sufficient account of the needs of hand-held and cellular phone makers.

ST focuses on WiFi/Cellular phone convergence, and will bring to EWC its expertise in low-power SoC technologies.

Read more on ST's move
-in this WirelessIQ report