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Bluetooth absorbs Wi-Fi 11n for speed - one day!

It's one thing knowing that "soon" (officially, April 21st) Bluetooth is going to be able to run at WiFi speeds, using 802.11n technology; but quite another question is: "When?" Answer: "Not this year."

Technically, the silicon could be available in weeks (say sources in silicon foundries) and the software which goes with the new silicon should be ready almost as quickly - but not to people with phones in their hands. We have to wait for the manufacturers to buy that silicon, think up neat and compelling product ideas, and build new handsets.

Right now, there are (relatively) few 802.11n phones - for a simple enough reason, too; transferring huge amounts of data very quickly takes power. Phones have very small batteries, or else they get heavy.

In a year from now, the manufacturers - Nokia, HTC, Samsung - may have found a way of designing a fast-wireless phone, and have a plan for making us want to buy one.

"Right now, the plans are in formulation," said one source inside a leading Bluetooth chip designer. "When the Bluetooth SIG finally makes its official announcement, it will be clear that this is all about speed. But we don't know what our customers, the phone makers, will want that speed for."

Reporter Mark Long summarised a SIG executive's explanation of the wireless details:

"On the technical side, I can tell you that it is a Generic Alternate MAC/PHY (AMP) that will enable Bluetooth profiles to take advantage of 802.11 speeds. The 802.11 Protocol Adaption Layer (PAL) will enable the Generic AMP feature to be used with an 802.11 radio."

This means that the Bluetooth chip, on its own, won't be doing the fast wireless; it will, effectively "set up" a comms session over a different, WiFi based, wireless chip.

Will it be useful to phone users? Probably; the WiFi Alliance take is that having higher speeds of WiFi means "you probably use the same amount of power to transmit a few megabytes, but you cram it into a shorter time, and move on sooner."

Asked for examples of such a requirement, however, the Alliance spokesman said: "We'll have to see what the market comes up with!"