Glenn Fleishmann’s Wi-Fi Networking News scoops the MSM on the merger of the two leading UWB organizations:
The two leading industry groups for ultrawideband merge: The Multi-Band OFDM Alliance and the WiMedia Alliance are merging their two groups to align goals more fully and reduce the number of acronyms and institutions. The two groups have very similar general technology goals for UWB, and this leaves Motorola and Freescale even more in the lurch as the personal area networking (PAN) focus of WiMedia and the consumer electronics focus of MBOA come together.
While WiMedia and MBOA have been working together for a while, the formal merger leaves no doubt as to what the dominant UWB standard will be: Motorola/Freescale is out in the cold. While there are still some issues with the FCC’s stance on MBOA – no statement has been issued from the government so far – there’s little doubt that the MBOA’s approach is both technically superior and more widely supported, so the big buildout can commence without IEEE 802.15.3a endorsement.
And it has, if the demo of Wireless USB at the Intel conference is any guide.
Is this the big announcement? I’m still completely in the dark about UWB and it’s potential.
It’s mainly a home subnet for hooking-up DVDs and TV sets to home LAN. There was a big standards tiff about a year ago but it’s all settled now.