Bluetooth: Dental Nightmare, Wireless Wonder

Imagine Palm Pilots and cell phones that wirelessly control your thermostat, unlock your doors, start your car, synch with your computer -- even brew your morning cup of Joe. That's just a few of the Jetsons-like promises of Bluetooth--the hottest technology in the wireless world today.
Technically speaking, Bluetooth is a wireless protocol which utilizes an enhanced version of the 2.4 GHz spectrum for data transfer. Bluetooth equipped devices, like walkie talkies, will have a receiver and transceiver for two-way communication. Basically, the goal of Bluetooth is to allow every device in your home to communicate wirelessly.

The Bluetooth group is a collection of manufacturers from cell phone heavyweights Ericsson and Nokia to computer chip makers Toshiba and Intel among others. While there are competing wireless formats, Bluetooth appears to be well positioned to become the industry standard--something desperately needed in a market filled with incompatible technologies.

The key to Bluetooth is its fast data transfer speeds. We've seen demos of Toshiba's Bluetooth digital cameras that wirelessly transfer images to a computer in the blink of an eye.

Expect cell phones with Bluetooth technology to be on the market by the end of the year. In January we previewed cool Bluetooth equipped headset. This innovative headset/microphone allowed users to wirelessly send and receive calls up to 30-feet away from its mobile phone handset.

Ericsson has two other Bluetooth phones, a new Wireless PC card and a Bluetooth base station that converts your mobile phone into a cordless phone to its stable of products.

The PC card enables a wireless connection between your mobile phone and your laptop. With an Ericsson Bluetooth equipped phone you can transfer data such as calendar and contacts information to and from your mobile phone and your laptop by simply waving the phone in front of the computer-no cables required. Using the mobile phone, you can also receive e-mail or other information via a built-in modem and have it automatically transferred to your laptop via a Bluetooth link. The Bluetooth PC Card will be available on the market in late 2000.

The coolest news from Ericsson is its prototype Bluetooth Home Base. This product demonstrates that the big mobile phone companies have their eyes on existing landline home telephone service. In fact, I know several people who have completely cut the cord to traditional home telephone service and rely solely on their cellular phones -- Long distance rates are much cheaper and with voice mail, email who needs to pay for simply renting a phone line? While multi-family households and modem capabilities restrict most of us from entertaining the thought of clipping local telephone providers, in the future wireless may be the only game in town. Recently, Qualcomm displayed a home base station with an antenna that you connected to the roof whereby all phones in the house worked wirelessly.

The Ericsson Home Base gives mobile phones the capabilities of a cordless phone by automatically connecting the mobile phone to the fixed telephone line. When the phone is out of range of the Bluetooth Home Base, it re-connects to the GSM network. On the road, at home or abroad, one phone is all one would need with this product. www.ericsson.com