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Fixed Mobile Handsets Special Feature

Why Wibree?

12 October 2006
Telecoms Special Features

Our intrepid investigator headed north this week, to the forests of Finland, following rumours of a strange technology being developed in Espoo.

It turns out this mysterious technology, known as "Wibree", is being pitched by Nokia as an open industry initiative for connecting small devices.

But it appears that Wibree is really nothing more than 'Bluetooth lite'. The Finnish firm claims "it consumes only a fraction of the power compared to other such radio technologies, enabling smaller and less costly implementations" whilst being easy to integrate with Bluetooth.

The question is, if a handset vendor is going to integrate this short range connectivity offering with Bluetooth, why not just use Bluetooth?

Other vendors that have rallied to Nokia's call and agreed to define the Wibree specification are Broadcom, CSR, Epson and Nordic Semiconductor.

According to the current estimate of the development group, the first commercial version of the interoperability specification will be available during the second quarter of 2007. By which time another 100 million Bluetooth units will have shipped.

The technical specs boast that Wibree has a 10m range and a data rate of 1Mbps, whereas Bluetooth can now run 3Mbps at a range of 10m or more.

Given the absence of Ericsson from the Wibree development group, Nokia's announcement could be nothing more than Scandic rivalry. Bluetooth actually came out of Ericsson's labs back in 1994.

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