There’s been a lot of hubbub about ultra wideband, or UWB, lately, a new wireless networking standard that promises to be so fast (speeds up to 400 megabits per second) that it could potentially replace Bluetooth, WiFi, Firewire, etc. and be used for beaming wireless cable television signals around your home rather than running coaxial cable. The problem is that there are two competing standards in the works, with Texas Instruments and its Multiband OFDM standard facing off against Motorola and its Direct Sequence CDMA group, both of which might end up making it into the marketplace, confusing consumers and hindering adoption. And to make matters worse (and very few people seem to be talking about this), UWB isn’t the wireless networking Holy Grail that it keeps getting touted as. Its top speed of 400Mbps drops off precipitously, and once you’re more than a few feet UWB is not likely to be much faster than a souped-up WiFi connection.
Read – Wired News – Wireless Cable TV in the Works
Read – The Feature – Second Ultra Wideband Standard Headed for Market
