Wednesday, July 16, 2003
Research Firm Says Wi-Fi Will Go Bye-Bye...and Bluetooth too!
Posted by Jason Dunn in "NEWS" @ 09:05 AM
"According to West Technology Research Solutions (WTRS), ultrawideband (UWB) will eventually beat out both the current Wi-Fi wireless networking standard and Bluetooth, while the open standard ZigBee protocol will enable every system in the house to talk to each other.
If those bold predictions from the Mountain View, Calif.-based research firm come true, then they promise that standards battles for wireless networking will continue into the next decade. The firm said Ultrawideband, or UWB, would eventually eclipse the popular 802.11b, or Wi-Fi, networking protocol that is spreading in use across the country, helped by rollouts of wireless Internet access in Starbucks coffee houses and McDonald's Restaurants."
Quite a bold statement! I'm not sure how much I agree with this - I'm sure that eventually something will replace WiFi and Bluetooth, but with adoption rates skyrocketing for 802.11b, once you get that technology entrenched, it's very hard to replace it with something better, unless the advantages of why it's better are very obvious. DVDs gained massive ground on VCRs in a short period of time, because the advantages were clear to consumer: better picture, better sound, smaller physical storage, etc. With WiFi though, 11 Mbps is quite fast for most scenarios, and the average home can be covered by one access point.
If anything I predict a slow phase-in of UWB, like we've seen with 802.11g - products will support both, and eventually drop the 802.11b. This process could easily take over a decade though - which is what they're predicting. I found it very interesting that they also predicted that UWB could replace CDMA/GSM technologies. Read the article for more information - I'd like to hear what you think about this.
UWB certainly seems to be a technology we should keep our eyes on for the future!
If those bold predictions from the Mountain View, Calif.-based research firm come true, then they promise that standards battles for wireless networking will continue into the next decade. The firm said Ultrawideband, or UWB, would eventually eclipse the popular 802.11b, or Wi-Fi, networking protocol that is spreading in use across the country, helped by rollouts of wireless Internet access in Starbucks coffee houses and McDonald's Restaurants."
Quite a bold statement! I'm not sure how much I agree with this - I'm sure that eventually something will replace WiFi and Bluetooth, but with adoption rates skyrocketing for 802.11b, once you get that technology entrenched, it's very hard to replace it with something better, unless the advantages of why it's better are very obvious. DVDs gained massive ground on VCRs in a short period of time, because the advantages were clear to consumer: better picture, better sound, smaller physical storage, etc. With WiFi though, 11 Mbps is quite fast for most scenarios, and the average home can be covered by one access point.
If anything I predict a slow phase-in of UWB, like we've seen with 802.11g - products will support both, and eventually drop the 802.11b. This process could easily take over a decade though - which is what they're predicting. I found it very interesting that they also predicted that UWB could replace CDMA/GSM technologies. Read the article for more information - I'd like to hear what you think about this.
UWB certainly seems to be a technology we should keep our eyes on for the future!
