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| Rumors Of Bluetooth's Death Greatly Exaggerated |
by Scott Raulinaitis, Editor - 10/17/2003 - 10:37am EST
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Various hot topics seem to go around in spurts around the internet. A week or two ago the web was abuzz about whether or not the Pocket PC had become boring. Prior to that, there was discussion and disagreement about whether PDAs will be supplanted by smartphones (in the generic sense, not Microsoft's specific implementation of it). These debates continue to rage on. The "story of the week" this week seems to be whether Bluetooth is on the way or out, or just starting to thrive.
Once touted as being the next big ubiquitous technology, it's adoption in the US has been slow and pairing devices using Bluetooth has not been without its share of frustrations. People still experience issues with alarms on the Pocket PC, and recurring alarms have never worked (shockingly, perhaps were never designed to). People still report on ActiveSync issues as well. You may as well discuss whether the Pocket PC has one foot in the grave, but despite Microsoft's seeming lack of interest in the little brother to Windows, HP continues to do their best at offering some great hardware which uses it.
The issues with Bluetooth are with the software, not the hardware. The fact that anyone has ever been able to get Bluetooth to work successfully in under a minute, even if they've pulled their hair out trying to implement it for hours in another scenario, demonstrates that the technology can work. The problem here is that too many manufacturers have implemented the back-end software poorly.
Many of the frustrations also stem from users trying to use Bluetooth for applications that it was never really designed for. It is not a replacement for Wi-Fi, even if geeks can extend its use in that direction. The more enlightened will argue that it's a "cable replacement" technology. I might argue further that it's a "cable replacement" technology for mobile users. Sure, you could use Bluetooth (or Infrared or another wireless technology) for connecting a keyboard and/or mouse to a desktop computer, but how many people even need to do that? My desktop computer doesn't move, so aside from an occasional wire tangle, I don't much care if my mouse is tethered to it the old fashioned way.
No, the real value of Bluetooth is demonstrated when you're away from home, connecting a Bluetooth cell phone to a PDA, for example. No one wants to carry around a cable in their pocket, or juggle trying to get the IR ports to line up. In Europe, there's one cell phone standard: GSM. In the US, we've got several, but the most comprehensive networks use CDMA. While Bluetooth has been alive on paper for several years, it's only been within the last year that you could get a Bluetooth phone in the US, and only then on the smaller GSM networks. To this day, you still can't buy a Bluetooth cell phone from Verizon or Sprint. Why? Verizon is its own creature, known for relying on its best of breed cell phone coverage and adopting new technology at a snail's pace. I imagine that the situation with Sprint has to do with their data usage pricing. For around a $15/month over and above the standard voice plans, you can get unlimited data usage using the highest speed data network of any cell phone system. When they dreamed up this package, they expected that users would be confined to downloading limited amounts of data using the rather limited "smartphones" they were offering at the time. Bluetooth opens up the tap, however, thus allowing you to download large amounts of data using a laptop, something that could tax Sprint's network. Sprint has had a Bluetooth-enabled phone (the Sony-Ericsson T608) waiting in the wings for a while now, and it's still unclear if or when it will be released. I suspect they're trying to figure out how they can tax users who want to use a Bluetooth phone for high volume data purposes, while not dissuading people who merely want to pair it with a Bluetooth headset from buying it.
Alas, this is where the chicken and egg syndrome comes into play and the disparity between largely US-based Bluetooth critics and European-based Bluetooth advocates becomes emerges. If the owners of the largest cell phone networks in the US don't incorporate Bluetooth into their cell phones, the userbase will be relegated to geeks trying to use Bluetooth in other creative ways. All is not lost, however. The US GSM networks have all started to offer Bluetooth phones this year and as their networks improve and subscriber base grows, Bluetooth will become a desirable feature among US consumers, with Verizon and Sprint eventually getting on board. Meanwhile, PalmSource, Microsoft, and others continue to fine-tune the back-end software to further simplify the process of pairing Bluetooth devices.
As far as the US is concerned, Bluetooth isn't an old man on his death bed. Rather, he's a healthy child who's just learning to ride his bike without the training wheels.
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