Four Years Later, Alereon's Wireless Device Chipset Tries to Be 'Universal'

It has been a very long road for the development of a wireless device connectivity standard that could go global - that would let, for instance, a Bluetooth device in one continent pair with the same computer over the same frequency, when it travels to another continent.

Four years ago, the electronics industry standards body IEEE first convened a task group to develop a worldwide standard for ultra wideband (UWB) wireless devices. A year and a half ago, the group literally gave up trying, and its various members went three separate ways.

As a result, the global radio spectrum became bifurcated into a staggering 14 bands of frequencies, one or more of which would be required at any one time for a wireless device such as a headset to pair with a computer or handset, within a country - and rarely the same choice from among the 14 for any given country.

This morning, chipset Alereon announced its own attempt at a brute-force solution to the current dilemma: the production of a UWB chipset that supports all 14 bands simultaneously. Those 14 bands are recognized by the WiMedia Alliance, one of the three groups that emerged from the disbanding of IEEE 802.15 WG3a. From the perspective of WiMedia - a group championed by Intel - the ability for a device to pick and choose from among the 14 bands based on geography, qualifies it as supporting global standards, even though it will still be picking and choosing once certain boundaries are crossed.

That ability also gained Alereon official certification from the USB Implementers' Forum (USB-IF), which gives the company the go-ahead to sell its chipset to manufacturers of wireless USB hubs.

One question that remains is whether Alereon's implementation will be compatible with those of rival manufacturers. Another is whether the answer to that question will actually matter, given that Belkin announced its "Cable-Free USB" hub for near-term availability during CES 2006 (that's not a typo), then officially delayed it in July and once again in December.

Last year, Freescale Semiconductor and its one-time division owner, Motorola, split off from the UWB Forum, a rival group to the WiMedia Alliance which they actually helped found. Since that time, the Forum has been pretty much blowing inactively in the wind, while manufacturers such as Belkin chose to follow Freescale's lead. That path apparently led nowhere, which led Belkin to unofficially change its choice of chipset to a Wisair model supported by the Alliance.

But that Wisair model isn't the first to be approved by the USB-IF; the Alereon model is. That may prompt Belkin and others to once again reconsider whether they made the right choice.

In the meantime, as veteran wireless industry reporter Glenn Fleischman discovered, Belkin went ahead and shipped some hubs anyway, with some now available on Amazon.com. But whose chipsets drive those hubs? Freescale's? Wisair's? Someone else's?

Despite what an Alereon spokesperson told the Associated Press this morning (or what the AP reporter may have thought he heard), products containing the Alereon chipset will not be available this year. Demonstration boards will be made available for testing during the third quarter, according to a statement directly from the company, which precludes the likelihood of any worldwide wireless USB or Bluetooth devices becoming available before Christmas.