Happy 20th Birthday Wi-FI! Former 3Comer Jeff Abramowitz does a great job in his article reminding us about the Wi-Fi curious companies that 3Com helped lead, driving the Wi-Fi alliance that made it all happen. Jeff told me about his article today and noted that, "A point that is not in the article is that 3Com was the ring leader for the Wi-Fi Alliance, and actually had good vision and good intentions for years but then fumbled the ball. You know the rest of the 3Com story..."
Find his article here: https://www.wired.com/story/how-wi-fi-almost-didnt-happen/
And don't forget to pick up our book that explains in detail how 3Com fumbled the Wi-Fi ball. https://amzn.to/2NEUjtF
PS - For those of you that are still thirsting for more info about the history (did you know there were 17 companies in the Wi-Fi Alliance in 1999, and 800 companies today?) check out the Wi-Fi Alliance web site at https://www.wi-fi.org/beacon/jeff-abramowitz/wi-fi-alliance-then-and-now
Jeff Abramowitz was an author of the original IEEE 802.11 standard, and a founder of the Wi-Fi Alliance while at 3Com and has held executive roles in the Wi-Fi industry for 25 years. His oral history of Wi-Fi is chronicled in the Computer History Museum. He is a Principal at A2Z Partners and is writing a book on the early years of Wi-Fi.
I worked in the Hemel Hempstead facility in 1999. My boss was seconded to work on a wifi project, that got canned when the 3Com management discovered there were already 2 wifi projects within 3Com happening at the same time. He got some gardening leave for that mistake.