Intersil Gaining on Adoption of Wireless Standard

Intersil

(ISIL)

was gaining in the premarket after a technology standards-setting group approved expansion of a wireless networking protocol supported by the company's products.

A task group of the so-called IEEE's 802.11 committee, a group that sets standards for wireless local-area networks, voted to back a protocol that will allow data transfer at 54 megabytes per second in the 2.4-gigahertz spectrum.

Intersil said it will develop and market a new chipset meeting the group's standard starting in the second quarter of 2002.

The company's shares were gaining $1.60, or 4.5%, to $37.50 on Instinet.