Bluetooth and the quest for a wireless world
By Jonathan Moules
FT.com site; Dec 02, 2003
Among its many messages and parables, the Bible has a lot to teach the proponents of new technology. The world's most popular book can also be one of the least used by its owners. You can lead a horse to water but you cannot make it drink, as the book of Proverbs might put it.
A similar paradox faces Bluetooth, the short-range wireless technology that is likely to be sitting on your mobile phone handset. Since its birth a decade ago in the laboratories of the Swedish telecommunications group Ericsson, Bluetooth has been hailed by the geekish community as a breakthrough in wireless networks by cutting the need for cables to connect consumer devices. Yet even those who have a Bluetooth device may live in blissful ignorance as to how to use it.
In the third quarter of this year Bluetooth passed a milestone by being shipped in more than 1m products a week. This is mainly because of the links between Bluetooth and the mobile phone manufacturers, which produce some 1.25bn units a year, by far the largest-selling electronic device in the world. However, Bluetooth can be found in a thousand other, larger consumer goods, including cars, video surveillance systems, fridges and microwave ovens. Bluetooth, it seems, is everywhere; but the question persists - is it any use to those who have it?
Mike McCamon, executive director of Bluetooth special interest group, representing the technology's developers, guesses that of the 1m or so products sold each week, about three-tenths will be used for their Bluetooth capability. But he admits this is mere speculation since no one has been able to measure the usage of Bluetooth products.
Nigel Deighton, research director at Gartner, the technology analyst, says: "What we are seeing is an awful lot of [mobile phone] handsets with Bluetooth capability with people not using the Bluetooth unit."
Mr Deighton says one reason Bluetooth has not been a runaway success is that, with several iterations of the Bluetooth standard, there has been no guarantee that Bluetooth products from different vendors will work together: "People need to have something that is up and running minutes after they get it out of the box but this has not happened with many Bluetooth products."
The bigger issue, says Mr Deighton, is that the average customer does not know what their Bluetooth product can do. "If you go to the average guy in the street and ask him what Bluetooth is, he probably won't be able to give you an answer."
Bluetooth manufacturers have been trying to educate the market - with some degree of success. A year ago it launched a project called Five Minutes out of the Box that aimed to ensure that a new owner of a Bluetooth device would be able to use the product's wireless functions quickly. New laws in the US, UK and other western countries forcing car drivers to use hands-free mobile phones could be a boon for Bluetooth equipment, Mr Deighton notes.
Perhaps the greatest help companies have given to Bluetooth is to find services that revolve around the uses of the technology. British Telecommunications, the UK carrier, is testing Blue Phone, which uses Bluetooth to connect wireless phones to its phone line network.
The benefit to customers is that they do not have to pay higher wireless charges when in the vicinity of a phone jack, whether at home or in the office. The benefit to BT, which has not owned a wireless network since it spun off its mobile phone arm in 2001, is that it recreates a need for its traditional phone service when increasing numbers of customers are cutting the cord.
BT chose Bluetooth because it was in so many mobile phones, says Ryan Jarvis, chief of products at BT Mobile. "Blue Phone is about a service not picking a technology. Bluetooth is the only way at the moment of delivering our service."
If BT were encouraging customers to communicate over something other than a mobile phone it might have chosen Wi-Fi, another wireless standard that covers greater distances than Bluetooth and whose potential has reached dotcom levels of hype in the US. Wi-Fi (802.11 in the computer industry) has been employed on larger devices than mobile phones - personal computers and handheld devices such as the Palm Pilot but there are plans to put it on mobile phones within a few years.
Bluetooth has other challengers. The ZigBee Alliance is a group of about 50 companies developing an 802.15.4 standard that plans to offer a lower-speed version of Bluetooth. It consumes less battery life and is aimed at functions such as TV remote controls and sensors, which operate over short distances and require less power than a mobile phone.
Ultrawideband, or 802.15.3, is a high-speed version of Bluetooth, suitable for multimedia wireless applications such as computer games. Version 3a of the Ultrawideband technology will run at more than double the speed of Bluetooth but the industry has yet to agree on a clear definition of the Ultrawideband standard.
"These new technologies are potentially less of a threat, more of a successor [to Bluetooth]," says Mr Deighton. He sees a whole range of these wireless standards, replacing the cables on consumer products by providing so-called wireless personal area networks.
If Bluetooth can capitalise on excitement about wireless devices and find a practical purpose, its future is bright. If not, it will go the way of many promising but forgotten technological ideas.
LIBERATION FROM THE CABLE LOOMS
There are several wireless standards, all promising to cut the cables that tie us to computers, hands-free phone headsets and internet connections.
Bluetooth: Named after a 10th-century Danish King, Harald Bluetooth, this is a short-range wireless standard for communication, primarily between mobile phones and personal computers or hands-free speakers and microphones. The standard was founded by Ericsson in 1994 but it was joined by Nokia, International Business Machines, Toshiba and Intel in 1998 to form the Bluetooth Special Interest Group, which campaigns for further Bluetooth adoption.
Wi-Fi: This is the popular name for the 802.11 family of wireless standards, embraced by the computer industry to connect laptops to broadband networks in airports, homes, coffee shops, pubs and parks. Wi-Fi has been installed in many laptops and handheld devices but it has yet to become widely used in mobiles, in part because it is more power-hungry than Bluetooth.
Ultrawideband: UWB, or 802.15.3, is a faster wireless standard than Bluetooth. Chipmakers Texas Instruments and Intel and mobile phone handset manufacturer Motorola are pushing UWB, which was used for a while by the US military. It has the potential to replace both Bluetooth and Wi-Fi but will more probably complement them with cheap last-mile links for broadband networks from the street to the front door. Advocates of UWB have yet to agree on a single standard for the technology.
ZigBee Alliance: This group of about 50 companies is developing the 802.15.4 standard, a relatively low-speed, low-power consumption wireless network technology. The alliance is targeting devices that need long battery lives, measured in months or years, such as remote controls or sensors. It is likely to complement rather than compete with Bluetooth. |
