An obvious question that might be posed by existing or prospective customers: Who cares if Meru is tweaking the standard to improve performance, as long as it works? Given the fact that many organizations operate WLANs within the geographic confines of their own facilities, why should it matter whether Meru's system could interfere with adjacent networks that don't exist?
It's a fair question.
This isn't the first time that a vendor has strayed from standards. Many companies--including Cisco--have "extended" standards with proprietary extensions designed to provide performance benefits. This is one of the ways vendors differentiate themselves.
There have also been instances where vendors have engaged in creative interpretation of 802.11 standards. For example, wireless VoIP market leader SpectraLink has been prioritizing network access of its phones for several years by implementing zero-backoff algorithms that raise questions about 802.11 compliance. Another notable example involves home Wi-Fi gateways that employ proprietary channel-bonding enhancements that negatively impact adjacent networks, regardless of which channel they're operating on. That incident led the Wi-Fi Alliance to establish a "good-neighbor" policy that, if violated, could result in denial or revocation of Wi-Fi certification.
It's worth noting that Meru's system has been certified by the Wi-Fi Alliance and it doesn't rely on any proprietary enhancements to Wi-Fi clients to achieve its performance benefits. It outperforms competitors under certain scenarios using standard off-the-shelf clients.
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