Bright Bluetooth needs some filling

What do a 10th century Danish king and a 21st century technology have in common? Not much apart from their name - Bluetooth or Blatand as the Danes called their ruler back in the days of frenetic hut burning.

Bluetooth technology dates from 1998, and is the result of joint achievements of nine major companies within the telecommunication and computer industries: 3Com, Ericsson, Intel, IBM, Lucent, Microsoft, Motorola, Nokia and Toshiba.

Almost 1800 other manufacturers have now also joined the Bluetooth family, making it the fastest-growing industry standard to date.

How it works
Bluetooth is a radio frequency (RF) specification for short-range, point-to-multipoint voice and data transfer. It can transmit through solid, non-metal objects at a range of 10cm to 10m, but can be extended to 100m by increasing the transmit power. It's based on a low-cost, short-range radio link and facilitates ad hoc connections for communications environments.

Bluetooth uses 80 transmission channels and can 'hop' between them at a rate of 1700 channels a second, selecting the best channel for the user depending on interference. Bluetooth requires a radio frequency that is licence-free and open to any radio and the 2.45Ghz, industrial scientific-medical band satisfies these requirements, although it must cope with interference from baby monitors, garage door openers, cordless phones and microwave ovens, which also use this frequency.

Bluetooth will enable you to connect to a wide range of computing and telecoms devices without the need for cables. It delivers opportunities for rapid, ad hoc connections, and in the future, possibly for automatic, unconscious, connections between devices. Bluetooth's power-efficient radio technology can be used in many of the same devices that use infra-red, such as:

• phones and pagers
• modems
• local area networks
• access devices
• headsets
• desktop and handheld computers.

As with all new initiatives, there are a variety of concerns surrounding Bluetooth - many of them entirely justified.

First is interoperability - connecting countless devices with different operating systems requires more than one microchip. According to The Impact of Bluetooth, a report by researcher Frost & Sullivan, interoperability will become an increasingly important concern as the different applications of Bluetooth will pull it in many different directions.

Its widespread and growing backing is both its greatest strength and its long-term Achilles heel. Jan Ten Sythoff, industry analyst at Frost & Sullivan and author of the report, says: "Significant problems will arise in the long-term, triggered by companies active in a range of industries offering a series of Bluetooth-enabled products for a number of different applications."

Transmission interference may also hinder adoption. The biggest problem in adding Bluetooth to mobile telephones is the potential for the powerful mobile phone transmitter to block the Bluetooth receiver during transmission - putting a powerful cellular radio next to a low-power Bluetooth radio in a mobile phone requires careful design because of the possibility of RF interference between the two radios.

Nigel Deighton, research director for analyst Gartner, warns: "There is growing potential for pollution as [Bluetooth radio frequency] is an open and unlicensed band and this may pose problems going forward."

Does it matter?
That depends on who you talk to. The sceptics dismiss Bluetooth as something that just gets rid of a few wires.

Matthew Nordan, senior analyst with Forrester Research, says: "It's hard to see a killer app using Bluetooth at the moment, although it may be useful for refining existing applications or finding a cheaper way to do things. For the business user, Bluetooth is a 'nice to have' but not a 'need to have'. Users should not pay a premium for it unless they have a specific need for it."

That specific need may just turn out to be, you guessed it, ecommerce.

"Bluetooth represents a completely new dimension to ecommerce which will radically change how portable and wireless devices are viewed and used," says Deighton. "It provides endless opportunities for applications such as vending and ticketing machines, point of sale terminals and banking machines." Deighton predicts that more than 75 per cent of new handsets shipped in 2004 will be Bluetooth-enabled, and that these handsets could have a starring role in mobile commerce. In the same year, Gartner says that 40 per cent of ecommerce transactions outside the US will be done through portable, web-enabled devices. Because of the uptake of mobile devices in Europe, Gartner also believes that Europe will be able to leapfrog the US in the ecommerce revolution. Bluetooth will play a part in that revolution.

Gartner is not the only one predicting great things. According to the Frost & Sullivan report, Bluetooth will witness "gargantuan growth" this year with global sales predicted to reach $36.7m (£23.1m) in just eight months. The report, which also warns of longer term complications for the technology, predicts that revenues will rise to $699.2m by 2006 ? a compound annual growth rate of 63.4 per cent.

Sythoff says: "In the longer term, the huge installed base of Bluetooth devices will allow users to quickly and easily communicate information. The biggest benefit for business users will be the ability to wirelessly synchronise information on a PDA [personal digital assistant] or a mobile with a desktop computer. Users will also benefit from cable-free connections to printers, faxes, digital cameras and so on. This 'infrastructure' will result in a whole host of new applications and services for companies to exploit."

Who's doing what
Since the Bluetooth specification was crystallised, it has been much-hyped yet barely used. Scarcely any products supporting the specification have yet been released, but this does not prevent suppliers from whetting our appetites by concocting magnificent scenarios where Bluetooth will change our lives.

"There are some fantasy applications when people talk about Bluetooth. First, that your mobile phone and PDA will recognise each other and exchange and update data automatically," says Nordan. "Second, that you can use a high-speed phone to get a PDA online. And third, that you will have a wireless desktop. But in reality, that is going to be very hard. Vendors have promised products this quarter but many are now saying fourth quarter at the earliest," he adds.

Ericsson's early effort with a wireless telephone headset was unveiled at Comdex '99. The headset was the first hands-free device to incorporate Bluetooth technology, using it to connect the headset to a mobile phone.

Weighing 20g, the headset works up to 10 metres away from the phone. It is compatible with Ericsson T28, T28 World and R320 handsets. Ericsson aims to begin shipping the device in the middle of the year.

Ericsson is also partnering with Visa, which announced in November that it is developing a payment solution for mobile ecommerce using a Bluetooth-enabled wireless wallet, developed by Ericsson. The wireless wallet, which can serve as a conventional wallet for bills and coins, contains multiple smartcard readers. A smartcard inserted into the wallet can communicate with a mobile Bluetooth-enabled point of sale terminal, debiting the user's credit or bank card automatically. A mobile phone can be used for internet shopping using the smartcard in the wallet for payment. Bluetooth means the wallet can stay in the pocket of the user while interacting with the mobile phone.

Bruno Degiovanni, senior manager responsible for new channels at Visa Europe, says: "Bluetooth has certain advantages over infra-red, particularly as it does not require a line of sight. Currently a smartcard reader must be attached to the PC. I can envisage that the best way to accept a smartcard is through a short distance technology like Bluetooth. We are looking at using Bluetooth actually in smartcards."

Even Degiovanni, however, has his doubts. "Bluetooth is still very new and we want to see some proof that it works before we proceed with it," he says. If that proof doesn't arrive, there are plenty of possible contenders waiting in the wings.

The opponents
The closest rival to Bluetooth is the Infra Red Development Association (IrDA), the infra-red standard for PCs, that's found in all notebooks, PDAs, some embedded systems, digital cameras and many mobile phones - it has an installed base of more than 50 million units. IrDA is a point-to-point, narrow angle, ad-hoc data transmission standard designed to operate over a distances of up to one metre. The data transfer rate is one area of weakness for Bluetooth, when compared to IrDA: Bluetooth's aggregate bandwidth is limited to 1Mbps - IrDA supports 4Mbps, with 16Mbps under development.

IrDA's short range makes it ideal for 'point and shoot' applications, primarily for data transfer, though networking is possible. While IrDA's capabilities are very different to that of Bluetooth's, some argue that the two technologies are complimentary - for example, suppose you were in a business meeting and you wanted to transfer an electronic business card. Here, a Bluetooth transmitter would find potential recipients (thanks to its omni-directionality) and you'd have to pick the one you want to use from a list. This isn't an issue with infra-red - you simply point it at the intended device.

However, Bluetooth's ability to penetrate solid objects and its capability for maximum mobility within a personal area network allows for data exchange applications that are very difficult or impossible with IrDA. For example, with Bluetooth you could synchronise your phone with a PDA without taking the phone out of your pocket or bag, something not possible with IrDA.

The omni-directional capability of Bluetooth allows synchronisation to start when the phone is brought into range of the PC. Using Bluetooth for synchronisation does not require that the phone remain in a fixed location. If the phone is carried in a person's pocket, the synchronisation can occur while the individual moves around. With IrDA, the phone must be placed in the proper location and remain stationary while the synchronisation executes.

Bluetooth also has a rival in the wireless networking arena - 802.11. The 802.11 mobile Lan access standard is arguably the best suited for networking (it was specifically devised for this role). However, the wireless Lan concept has been plagued with interoperability, data transfer rate and above all prohibitive cost problems since its inception. Bluetooth guarantees interoperability from the outset, offers much the same speed and will be considerably cheaper to implement. There's also an 'either/or' gotcha here - although Bluetooth can co-exist with 802.11, they are unlikely to work together in close proximity. That gives the laptop user a problem - if they want to have both, they need to be able to select one or the other. That's not a solution which many users will get right.

What next?
Now it seems, it's just a case of waiting until some real products come on the market.

"We definitely think Bluetooth is going to happen," asserts Microsoft mobile products group manager Mike Wehrs, which is hardly surprising as the company is just one of the vendors propelling Bluetooth forward.

When this 'happening' will take place still remains uncertain with only vague shipment times being offered by vendors.

"Over the next six months we will hit the trough of disillusionment with Bluetooth," warns Deighton. "But I suspect as we begin to realise the value of connections previously not possible, the scope of Bluetooth will open up rapidly. It will gain critical mass pretty quickly, but I don't expect it to stand still. There will probably be a son of Bluetooth."

Just make sure you are ready for the invasion, and don't get left behind in your grass hut.