Chris Diorio on spectrum policy
From Perseverance Over Speed: Creating a New Category with Impinj's Chris Diorio · · Madrona
“When Walmart announced tracking pallets and cases it was fantastic — except we didn't have spectrum, we didn't have a wireless standard and we didn't have products; we had to create a standard (ratified in 2005) and work with regulators like the FCC to get spectrum allocated.”
On , Chris Diorio, Co-Founder, Vice Chairman & Chief Executive Officer at IMPINJ INC, spoke about spectrum policy during Perseverance Over Speed: Creating a New Category with Impinj's Chris Diorio on Madrona.
About Chris Diorio
Chris Diorio, co-founder and CEO of Impinj, has been discussing the company's role in the development of RFID technology and the Internet of Things. In a November 2024 podcast, Diorio said that "any transformative technology takes time — a long time; it doesn't happen overnight" and that the "fail fast" mantra "does not work when you're inventing a new category." He noted that Impinj initially had to create a wireless standard and secure spectrum before it could fulfill Walmart's demand for pallet and case tracking. Diorio stated that the company has sold more than 100 billion chips and described Impinj as "the most pervasive technology that nobody's ever heard of." Diorio has also publicly challenged the RFID research community to develop an open, decentralized system for item-to-owner resolution, arguing that current numbering systems point to the manufacturer rather than the item's owner. He said the industry has built "a bunch of mini intranets of things" and called for a "DNS-like infrastructure" to link physical items to their digital twins in the cloud. In a separate 2019 campaign announcement, Diorio declared his candidacy for the Board of Selectmen in Whitman, Massachusetts, citing concerns about fiscal management and what he described as the embrace of "bigotry, racial bias, ethnic biases and religious intolerance" by some local officials.