Windows Phone Thoughts: Bluetooth Competition Brewing

"Intel, Sony and others are meeting to decide which of a slew of proposals submitted by wireless-networking companies will become a new standard to rival Bluetooth--and a military technology once known as the "sneaky wave" is making a splash. Philips, Texas Instruments and Samsung are among the other companies flexing their muscles as part of the IEEE 802.15 Working Group for WPAN, which is meeting this week in Dallas to settle on a new standard technology for wireless personal area networks, or WPANs. Such networks create high-speed wireless connections over short distances to allow for synchronization between a personal digital assistant and a computer, say, or to connect a television to a cable TV box, and so on. The winning technology behind the standard, which will bear the name 802.15.3a, is expected to generate $1.39 billion in revenue by 2007, according to projections by Allied Business Intelligence."

The most interesting of these is UWB, or Ultra Wideband. It was apparently once called the "sneaky wave". Maybe that's what they need for WPANs to take off - a catchier name.