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A House Divided: UWB's Double Standards

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the battle-of-the-standards dept.

Mai writes "What happens when two coalitions within a standard come into conflict, and it doesn't get resolved quickly? The ultrawideband technology standard shows you."

10 of 95 comments (clear)

  1. Why wait? by Spazmania · · Score: 3, Insightful

    If we'd waited for standardization for 56k modems, we'd have waited an extra three years. Instead we had x2 and k56 flex for a little while. Was that a bad thing? No, not really. It took the pressure off the final v.90 standard, so they could take the time and get it right.

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    1. Re:Why wait? by eln · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Trust me, as someone who was working for an ISP that chose the k56 flex standard, it was a very very bad thing. Our tech support calls went through the roof, because k56 flex never really worked right. Those were the days when every ISP out there had these big books of modem init strings that they had to use on (it seemed) every other call. Let me tell you, trying 15 different init strings with people who only had one phone line in their house was no picnic. While the rush to 56k may have been good for the industry, it sure sucked for those of us working in the trenches at the time.

  2. Re:Answer to the question... by Gherald · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Don't forget Blu-Ray vs HD-DVD.

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  3. Reality TV by Have+Blue · · Score: 1, Insightful

    When Standards Coalitions Attack, next on FOX!

  4. Implications for SETI? by SpamJunkie · · Score: 4, Insightful

    From the article:

    a signal spread out so broadly that it just looks like background noise if you aren't the one it's aimed at.

    Would pose a problem for SETI if this is what all the other intelligent civilizations are doing.

    1. Re:Implications for SETI? by tetromino · · Score: 5, Insightful

      a signal spread out so broadly that it just looks like background noise if you aren't the one it's aimed at.

      Would pose a problem for SETI if this is what all the other intelligent civilizations are doing.

      If SETI can detect any sign of an alien DVD player communicating with an alien TV set on Tau Ceti, I would guess that SETI is using a time machine to import radio telescopes from AD 2500 (in which case, they might as well be importing hyperspace drives).

      Seriosly though, high-power, unfocused, inefficient and uncompressed radio signals - the sort of thing SETI might be able to detect - are on the way out. Nowadays, signals travel over cables, or bounce from sattelites, and in any case use compression techniques that make the signal totally useless unless you know the protocol spec.

      Perhaps the best sign of a high-technology civilization that we can detect is a planet that suddenly emits a burst of gamma rays and then stops emitting any signals forever...

  5. Broken standards by phorm · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Because when a standard does come up, it might be broken. Standards often deal with legalities... so shipping a product that doesn't meet standards may in fact break some laws in various countries. I think this quote summarizes it well enough:

    What good does it do you to have a cell phone and a PDA that can exchange data, if they are required by law to be powered off the moment you leave the country? For that matter, this also increases manufacturing costs, and thus consumer costs, decreasing sales.

  6. wikipedia article on OFDM by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OFDM

    After reading this, it seems pretty clear that Motorola backs cdma-based solution just because it has already invested huge amounts in (w)cdma-based technologies, already having lots of patents giving it more royalties, not because of it's technological merits.

  7. Re:That's what you get. by beaststwo · · Score: 2, Insightful
    Ditto for stuff like those Belkin "pre-standard" 802.11n access-points. Non-techie users will buy them now, not understanding that they may/may not be upgradable to the standard and if they're not upgradable, Belkin has no responsibility to the customer for having sold a now useless product.

    So we wind up paying, sometimes over and over, so companies can fight it out in the marketplace. The marketplace is indeed an efficient means of sorting out winning from losing ideas and marketing schemes, but it often makes losers out of consumers.

  8. I'm with Motorola on this one by ka9dgx · · Score: 2, Insightful
    Based on the article alone, and on purely religious grounds, I'm with Motorola on this one. The whole point of UWB is to have a very wideband signal, so that you don't have to get into issues of having to avoid frequency X, Y, or Z.

    Once you start talking about frequencies, and channels, you might as well give up the game.

    --Mike--