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Norwood's Bluetooth blues E-mail
by Stuart Corner   
Sunday, 01 October 2006
Page 1 of 2
The meteoric rise of WiFi in the eight years of Bluetooth's existence has done much to diminish the latter's aspirations. That has been particularly unfortunate for one Australian company which has invested over $23 million in R&D exploiting Bluetooth to the max, but which now finds itself perilously short of cash.

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The Bluetooth short range wireless technology was unveiled by Ericsson, IBM, Intel, Nokia and Toshiba in 1998 with the promise that it would revolutionise wireless connectivity for personal and business mobile devices. Ericsson in particular had grand ambitions for its bluetooth products. It started, but later disbanded, a company dedicated to Bluetooth technology that launched a Bluetooth Local Infotainment Point (BLIP), a stand-alone or network-connected platform designed for installation in public places that would deliver information to nearby bluetooth-enabled mobile phones, PDAs or other devices.

However one of the most ambitious exploiters of the technology was Norwood Systems, UK headquartered but with its origins and R&D in Western Australia, which in mid 2002 announced the commercial availability of EnterpriseMobility, its "wireless solution for affordable in-building communication".

EnterpriseMobility users were able to make and receive calls and view applications on their PDA or mobile phone from anywhere in the office by connecting over Bluetooth to the fixed line network. This functionality was achieved with much investment in software to enable communication to be handed off between bluetooth access points in a network.

CEO and co-founder, Paul Østergaard, told me in 2003 that Norwood believed bluetooth to have a number of advantages over WiFi. "There are many more bluetooth devices than WiFi devices being produced. Shipments of bluetooth chipsets exceed those of WiFi chipsets by about seven to one. Also the battery life of bluetooth devices is much longer than for WiFi: currently about 20 to 30 times. That might come down to 10-15 times but there are some limitations in the physics because the higher bit rates of WiFi demand chips with higher clock speeds which use more power."
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