Bluetooth Sets Devices Loose New technology
with a strange name could soon create wireless connections
among all kinds of electronic gear
BY STEVE WOODWARD
Newhouse News Service
Published Sunday, April 2, 2000, in the San Jose Mercury News
BLUETOOTH may be the biggest technology you never heard of.
In the next couple of years, if Bluetooth boosters are right, you may be transformed from a mere human into a walking ``personal area network,' capable of communicating remotely and automatically with all the devices in your life.
Originally envisioned as a way to replace wires with radio waves, Bluetooth has begun to look like a solution for everything from downloading e-mail on the run to sending digital photos over your mobile phone.
Technology companies Intel, Nokia, Toshiba, IBM, Lucent, Motorola, 3Com, Ericsson and Microsoft are cooperating to develop standard ways for people and their devices to connect wirelessly using the Bluetooth protocol. The first Bluetooth-enabled devices should be on the market within months.
But the most promising uses of the technology are still a little beyond the horizon. Consider some of the uses that Bluetooth's backers envision:
Your Bluetooth-enabled cell phone transforms into a portable phone as soon as you walk into your home, or functions as a walkie-talkie when communicating with another Bluetooth cell phone.
A Bluetooth headset leaves your hands free to talk on the phone while washing the dishes or driving.
You surf the Internet anywhere from your hand-held organizer or laptop computer, printing out full-size Web pages on a remote printer via a cell phone in your pocket.
Your Bluetooth MP3 player downloads music from the Internet via your cell phone and sends it through a set of Bluetooth speakers.
Your cell phone automatically unlocks your car and sets up your seat and stereo preferences as soon as you walk up to it.
In short, you do the walking. Your devices do the talking.
``For consumers, it just means more convenience,' said Simon Ellis, who manages Intel's mobile communications marketing group. ``Putting numbers into the cell phone can be done without taking the cell phone out of your pocket.'
Prospects for growth
Several market studies foresee explosive growth in devices that communicate through Bluetooth technology.
Cahners In-Stat Group, for example, predicts that more than 670 million Bluetooth-enabled devices will be in use by 2005, up from zero today. Dataquest sees 250 million units by 2002. Frost & Sullivan predicts that sales of Bluetooth products will hit $36.7 million this year and shoot to nearly $700 million by 2006.
Even skeptics say the widespread adoption of Bluetooth devices is a question of ``when,' not ``if.'
``Some of the forecasts from proponents are a bit optimistic,' said Jack Quinn, president of Micrologic Research, based in Phoenix. Nevertheless, he added, ``I think it'll be very big.'
Quinn projects that 1.2 million Bluetooth devices will be in circulation by year-end, rising to 108.8 million by 2004. Currently, more than 1,600 companies worldwide are developing standards that will enable one company's Bluetooth devices to talk to another's.
The basic Bluetooth technology is, in essence, a tiny short-range radio on a chip that can translate digital data from computers. The radio sends and receives voice and data signals generated by other Bluetooth radios that come within the broadcast range -- 10 meters, or about 30 feet.
Because radio waves pass through solid substances, Bluetooth devices can communicate through walls and other barriers that stop competing technologies such as infrared.
However, other barriers to widespread use exist. Bluetooth-enabled chips, for example, cost too much for high-volume production. Manufacturers must prove their devices really work together. And developers must prove that Bluetooth is secure enough to withstand attempts to eavesdrop or steal data from radio transmissions. But those barriers are falling. Take cost, for instance.
``In my opinion, to be big, the chip has to be well under $10,' analyst Quinn said. The chip now sells for an average of $14.40 each, he estimates. But the average selling price should drop to $7.10 next year and to $3.84 in 2002, he projects.
Also, the first Bluetooth consumer products already are undergoing testing for interoperability. Next week, for example, the Bluetooth Special Interest Group, the industry's top trade organization, will hold its second UnPlugFest event. Participants will test the ability of their devices to communicate with one another.
Security built in
As for security, Intel's Ellis asked rhetorically, ``How do you prevent someone in the lobby connecting with your cell phone and running up your cell phone bill?'
The answer, he said, lies in two primary technologies. First, Bluetooth uses encryption based on a 128-bit key, an extremely high level of security. Second, Bluetooth is a so-called frequency-hopping spread spectrum technology. That means Bluetooth's radio signal changes frequencies randomly 1,500 times a second, making it nearly impossible for someone else to intercept.
Moreover, the signal is spread out far wider than the actual data it carries, making it difficult for an intruder to filter out the data from the noise.
Ellis was involved in inventing ethernet, the most widely used standard for local area networks. He said that just as wired networks spawned new uses such as e-mail and remote computing, today's wireless technologies will give birth to more new uses.
``Today, if you carry a mobile computer or a PalmPilot, you need cables and cradles and connectors,' he said. ``You can replace all that with wireless technology.'
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