There was some speculation when the MacBook Pro was announced that it might support IEEE 802.11a wireless networking in addition to the traditional 802.11b/g networking. 802.11a provides the same speeds as 802.11g, but in a different chunk of frequency spectrum. This is very helpful when you’re around other devices that may be trying to use the same frequencies as 802.11b/g (which is pretty common).

Since then, I haven’t seen any confirmation or denial of it working… so I tested it with an 802.11a access point I’m selling on eBay, and it does indeed work well. I wonder if Apple will update the Airport Express or Airport Extreme base stations to support 802.11a. I’m guessing not; I don’t really expect an update from them until they decide to support 802.11n. I wonder what they’ll call it… Airport Ultra?

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