UWB: The Naked Truth

In the wake of all T-Zero's "big news" it looks like the are finally admitting they were wrong.

For awhile they’ve been juxtaposing UWB against new "smart Wi-Fi" as a high performance wireless whole-home networking technology. Bad move.

Now they’re changing their tune, trying to create a ruckus (not the movie) around UWB as the ideal wireless extension to multimedia over coax (MOCA or HPNA). Good move. Wrong technology.

Here’s the naked truth:

• UWB won’t be an IEEE standard
  The IEEE disbanded UWB efforts earlier this year. This is a non starter for carriers that all require a standards-based products.
• UWB will *always* be a short-range (read 10 meter) thing
  The FCC has placed strict limits on UWB transmit power. And Europe is worse. So you either have high throughput or long distance - you can't have both. Period.
• UWB is one hand clapping (no client support)
  Wi-Fi is already everywhere, in everything.  UWB isn't. And that's not going to change anytime soon.
• Interference galore
  UWB will interfere with itself – especially if it’s deployed in pockets within different parts of a home. If carriers augment HPNA with wireless, they shoud use smart 802.11 that avoids interference. It’s a no brainer.
• QoS without the Q or the S (are you kidding?)
  If you combine UWB with MOCA/HPNA you move back and forth from one physical layer (PHY) media access control (MAC) to another PHY MAC and back again, how do you guarantee QoS?  Answer? You don’t. Ooooooooh OK. Wi-Fi can replace both and doesn’t have this problem.
• Management 101
  T-Zero, one of the biggest UWB spewers, makes chips, not systems. Carriers need systems, not chips - and systems they can actually manage.
• Consumers are price sensitive
  Wireless needs to be low cost (read inexpensive). To get that low cost you need volume and competition. UWB has neither. Wi-Fi has both.

So why reinvent the wheel? With existing 802.11a/b/g Wi-Fi and newer 802.11n Wi-Fi, carriers and consumers get everything they want. All this said, there’s one absolute truth here: there will most often ALWAYS be a Wi-Fi network in the house. Consumers (and Intel) are seeing to that. So why not use it for everything...if it works?

Today, with consumer Wi-Fi, it doesn’t.  But we’ve changed all that.  That's why we were chosen by the World Economic Forum as a 2007 Technology Pioneer. Enough chest beating...you get the point.