Telecom regulator Ofcom has waved its wand and as of Monday 13th August, Ultra-wideband will be legal to use within the home. But will it pave the way for a mass of new wireless products?
Ultra-wideband (UWB) takes a fairly large slice of radio bandwidth - over 500MHz, giving it it's girthy title. Low power wireless technologies utilising UWB can send data over short distances at data rates into the gigabits.
Ofcom's ruling means that UWB Wireless USB devices, along with other technologies that use UWB, could soon be coming to a home near you. The benefit, of course, is fewer wires, even for devices that need a hefty data rate, like, say, the connection between an HD Digibox and an HDTV.
Opinions of its usefulness are mixed, even amongst the world of us hacks. The Register isn't inspired by the matter: "Right now there's not a lot to do with UWB. Wireless USB might remove the need for a printer cable or two, but that's about it".
The BBC, however, reckons the wire-free digital home is just around the corner. Then again, it does attempt to explain UWB by saying it "uses part of the radio spectrum to transfer large amounts of data", accompanying the article with a picture of some wires... the caption? "Other wireless technologies". Score!
The HEXUS stance? It's cool, it really is, but using radio spectrum is an absolute nightmare.
Any household UWB devices will be low power and so won't interfere with anything critical. But they absolutely will interfere with each other, especially if different standards based on UWB all try to muscle in on the same segment of spectrum. It's happening now at 2.4GHz, and it's a pain in the rear.
So don't expect everything to become super high speed really fat wireless, unless you like having individual components in their own separate rooms.
Oh, and don't forget the power sockets!
