Bluetooth Toothless at Telecom 99
Hyped by more than a thousand vendors, Bluetooth is hard to find at this
year's show
Andy Dornan, Data Communications
Even though more than a thousand vendors have joined the Bluetooth SIG (Special Interest Group),
almost none of them are promoting it at Telecom 99.
"Most companies don't have anything to show yet," said Nikas Orup, Coordinator of Short Link
Technology at Ericsson Mobile Communications AB (Lund, Sweden), one of the few vendors
actually exhibiting Bluetooth technology at Telecom 99.
The lack of Bluetooth products and vendors at the show is a little surprising, since eighteen months
ago, Bluetooth promised "Wireless Communication Made Easy" by the end of the millennium. Its
founders envisioned a future of PANs (Personal Area Networks) surrounding all users, automatically
interfacing with fridges at home, printers in the office and mobile phones on the move.
While his Bluetooth demonstration is drawing crowds, Ericsson's Orup admitted the company has
no plans actually to sell the mobile phone, digital camera or headset on display.
Ericsson doesn't yet have a Bluetooth interface for a Personal Computer: a close look at the laptop
in its demonstration reveals a connection based on IRDA (Infra Red Data), the technology already
built-in to millions of computers but hardly ever used. And the Bluetooth interfaces in Ericsson's
display are chunky add-ons for existing gadgets --- a far cry from the one square centimeter, one
dollar devices eventually planned. "The first Bluetooth products will be plug-in accessories," Orup
admitted, blaming the delays on the technical difficulties of packing an entire wireless transceiver on
to a single chip.
Alcatel SA (Paris) says it is not exhibiting Bluetooth because so many other new technologies are
closer to reality. "Bluetooth will be very important, but it's for the future," said Laurent Guyot,
Marketing Manager for Mobile Phones Business Systems. "The products will not arrive until 2001."
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