Intel vs Motorola
The authorities are positive: the ITU will, this week, plump for the Motorola-endorsed ultra-wide band (UWB) technology. Meanwhile, the IEEE, which is also examining this direct-sequence CDMA UWB proposal in the IEEE 802.15.3a study group, is said to favour the Intel-sponsored MultiBand OFDM Alliance (MBOA) with Texas Instruments. Is it Europe vs America, yet again?
The race for control of UWB is, effectively, the bid to take over from Bluetooth. Both Bluetooth (already working) and UWB (still laboratory-based) do personal area networks.
The difference is simple: Bluetooth is never going much faster than a megabit per second; UWB promises half a gigabit per second... one day. Perhaps.
The politics of the battle are, however, not as simple as the normal trans-Atlantic battle (typified by the GSM vs CDMA phone fiasco, or the 802.11a vs HiPerLan farce). In this case, Nokia is said to be on the Intel side.
But politics there are. "Steve Turner, UWB business development manger at Texas Instruments Inc. - a core member of the MBOA - says the stalemate is due to delaying tactics that are now causing general annoyance throughout the industry," wrote Unstrung this week. He was pointing the finger at the Motorola initiative.
