Ultra Wideband May Get Wider

Ultra wideband, a would-be competitor to Bluetooth, Zigbee, infra-red and other short-range wireless technologies, is stuck in a standards stalemate that may not end anytime soon.

Rival proposals from an Intel-led group and Freescale Semiconductor, a subsidiary of Motorola, are expected to once again battle to a draw next week at a meeting of Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers
(IEEE) members in Berlin, according to a recent poll showing 60 percent favor Freescale's proposal, short of the necessary 75 percent.

The schism threatens to create an initial wave of UWB products that don't interoperate. This could give consumers the sort of bad first impression the
standards process was created to avoid.

Source: CNET http://snipurl.com/8y9s