Twenty seven Wi-Fi industry companies today announced a coalition formed to help speed the 802.11n high-speed WLAN standards-making process.

The official line mission statement of the newly-formed Enhanced Wireless Consortium (EWC) is "to accelerate the IEEE 802.11n standard development process and promote a technology specification for next-generation wireless local area networking (WLAN) products." But given the players and the process to date, the "help" smacks of the approach taken by companies trying to win the UltraWideband market.

The group includes heavy hitters Intel and Cisco as well as WLAN chipmakers Atheros and Broadcom. But notably absent is Airgo Networks, which has the most experience with MIMO technology via its True MIMO and True G chipsets, and which perhaps has the most to lose by this new development.

The EWC announcement said the spec supports speeds of up to 600 Mbit per second, but provided little other detail. The group will provide copies of the spec only to "EWC Adopters," which according to the EWC website can be "any company" that reviews, signs, and returns to the EWC a downloadable agreement. The EWC also said if its spec is ratified by the IEEE, EWC members have agreed to make their intellectual property necessary to the specification available to all parties on "reasonable and non-discriminatory (RAND) terms."