In-Stat's Vice President of Research, Frank Dickson, said:

"The goal of 802.11ac is to provide data speeds much faster than 802.11n, with speeds of around 1Gbps. The timing for 802.11ac approval is to have a draft standard created by 2011 and have the first 802.11ac products out by the end of 2012.

The technology behind 802.11ac has not been finalized. However, it will likely involve bonding four or even eight channels together and some tweaks to the modulation scheme."

Kurt Sauter, Xirrus, said:

"802.11ac is very high throughput for 5GHz and is not designed for use at 2.4GHz. The goal is to approach 1Gbps wireless networking. There are two core pieces of the technology to get there: the first is wider channels whereby we go from 20/40MHz channels that we use for 11n to 40/80MHz channels, effectively doubling the capacity that we have for 802.11n.

The second main feature is a technique called MU-MIMO which stands for Multi-User MIMO. This technique allows Spatial Division Multiplexing using multiple antennas. Here, the Access Point is able to transmit multiple spatial streams where each spatial stream can be directed to a different station. This technique allows simultaneous transmissions to separate client devices at the same time, which greatly improves the efficiency and throughput of Wi-Fi in dense user environments.

Xirrus looks forward to supporting 802.11ac which is targeted to be available sometime in 2012. Early implementations of 802.11ac may only support wider channels which may allow even earlier availability of 802.11ac products."