Since UWB shelved itself and concurrently transferred its intellectual property to the Bluetooth SIG group, we’ve been waiting for the release of Bluetooth 3.0. the Bluetooth special interest group released the latest official update to the Bluetooth standard. The new standard promises a eightfold increase in data rate as well as various improvements to stability and power saving functionality. Unicast Connectionless Data increases speed and decreases power drains for longer battery life and better throughput. Enhanced Power Control will help adapt to changing signal quality conditions and reduce the annoyances associated with interference laden areas and changes in distance. The bandwidth increase of up to 24Mbps is accomplished by spilling over into 802.11 radio communications. Many phones are already shipping with wifi capabilities so this shouldn’t mean a price jump or major engineering hurdles.

Wifi and Ethernet titans, Atheros and Broadcom, are already shipping BT3.0 chips. Of course we were, albeit foolishly, hoping that BT 3.0 might be packing more of a UWB sized punch. Sadly though, it seems reality has let us down again. Bluetooth 3.0 does bring some improvements to the current Bluetooth offering, but they seem minor in comparison to the concept that was Wireless USB. Here’s hoping that the various adopting industries will roll out some exciting applications for this new release.