Phone vendors eschew UWB for Wifi

Representatives of mobile phone manufacturers shocked a conference yesterday by pouring cold water over much-hyped fast ultrawideband (UWB) links.

John Barr, director of standards realisation at Motorola, said Wifi was more likely to be used for fast data transfers in the next generation of mobile phones because it was a more mature technology.

And Patrick Lind, senior specialist in mobile technology at Sony Ericsson, said there were teething problems with early implementations of all new technology. His company is researching UWB but was likely to stick with Wifi for a while.

But he said he would use UWB if a "major rival" did so. Mika Saren, technology marketing manager of Nokia, said he could not say if his company would use it. None of the three ruled out the use of UWB in mobile phones in the future.

They were speaking at a London conference on the evolution of Bluetooth, which is to be allied with UWB and possibly to Wifi. Bluetooth is frugal in its use of power and has well-tried systems of discovering compatible devices within range and pairing with them.

The idea, to be incorporated in the next-generation spec, is that Bluetooth is used for discovery and signalling but will call up a faster link when needed.

This was originally to have been UWB, but now Wifi is also being considered - under pressure from the Wifi organisations, according to some delegates at the conference.

Many were sceptical of the stance of the mobile-phone operators. Mark Moore, chief technology of UWB chip designer Artimi, said it was an example of the conservatism of European vendors (though Barr and Motorola are American). "You can expect to see UWB in phones from Asia next year," he said.

He also pointed out that UWB uses far less power than Wifi. "It is the most efficient way to transmit data," he said.

Representatives of other chip designers also said they knew for certain that some mobile-companies had plans for UWB models. But there was also a recognition of the fact that a Wifi infrastructure already exists, whereas UWB still has to build momentum.

Products are available in the US, and the technology is approved for use in Europe; but it seems that they will not go on sale here until next year.

Comment: UWB and the death of the smartphone