Like the 3GPP’s 5G New Radio, the WiFi community’s first ‘5G’ standard, 802.11ax, is close enough to finalization that companies can design ‘pre-standard’ chips, with reasonable confidence that they will only take minor tweaks to comply with the eventual specs. Broadcom announced its first 11ax offerings last week, joining Qualcomm and Quantenna. Although successive attempts have failed to bring the IEEE and its 802.11 standards, the basis of WiFi, directly into the 5G process, it is probable that 5G networks will rely on a combination of the two technology strands, to an even greater extent than current wireless services. And the WiFi roadmap has many aims in common with the 3GPP’s – increasingly so, as cellular standards focus more on…