The IEEE Task Group "n" voted on Thursday, January 19, to confirm the proposal for the 802.11n Wi-Fi standard. Submitted by the Joint Proposal team, this specification was developed by the Enhanced Wireless Consortium (EWC) and included several elements developed within the Joint Proposal team. By passing the confirmation vote, this proposal became the first official draft of the 802.11n standard.

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The draft will now proceed through the IEEE ratification process, which includes letter balloting, comment resolution, sponsor balloting and final ratification. Full approval of similar specifications has taken about a year, but the progress is unique to each standard and its associated participants.

The proposed IEEE 802.11n Wi-Fi standard will enable high-performance, next-generation wireless local area networking (WLAN) products. The draft supports speeds of up to 600 Mbps—a significant leap over today's Wi-Fi networks—and will enable wireless systems to deliver greater range. This will allow wireless products across multiple market segments to support advanced multimedia applications.