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DAILY NEWS AND INFORMATION FOR THE GLOBAL GRID COMMUNITY / MAY 26, 2003: VOL. 2 NO. 21
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Breaking News - Networking:
UWB Set To Make Commercial Debut
With the absence of a currently available and standardized wireless technology
that offers robust multimedia transport of multiple digital streams, Ultra-
Wideband (UWB) promises to be the technology that delivers the bandwidth and
QoS that many consumer electronics companies have been looking for. In-
Stat/MDR reports that, having seen the gap that Wi-Fi is leaving in the home
networking market, UWB proponents are realizing they must step up their
development process to capitalize on this opportunity. As a result, a UWB
standard is expected to be ratified by 1H 2005, and the high- tech market
research firm expects that standard-based end-products should roll out in late
2005 and 2006.
Ultra-wideband proponents have been scrambling to find their place in the
commercial world since the FCC's historic ruling in February 2002. "Overall,
UWB has much potential in linking together entertainment devices within a home
network, and also may serve to penetrate the business market through its
expected penetration in the PC market," says Gemma Paulo, a Senior Analyst
with In-Stat/MDR. "However, at this point, it is difficult to project the year
in which UWB end-products will ship in volume."
It is assumed that only limited numbers of proprietary UWB end- products will
go out, as a standard traditionally provides for a large number of vendors to
get into the market relatively quickly, causing prices to drop fast. CE
companies are expected to have demonstrations of UWB-enabled end-products at
the January 2004 CES. These end-products are expected to be powered by
proprietary chipsets from XtremeSpectrum, and perhaps from other UWB silicon
vendors such as General Atomics and Wisair. Standards-based chipsets are
expected to roll out once ratification of 802.15.3a is near, probably in the
2H 2004 1H 2005 timeframe.
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