It has already been seven years since the first Bluetooth devices hit the market, and now that all's working well, Intel, together with a company called Ozmo Devices. wants to kill off the short-range radio standard. The proposed successor. WiFi Personal Area Network (WiFi-PANl. is actually quite simple and has huge potential: it is based on the conventional Wi-Fi adapters already found in millions of PCs, laptops and gadgets. No new hardware would be required in these devices, only a new driver that enables the functionality. With a proposed throughput of 9 Mbps, WiFi-PAN would be almost five times faster than Bluetooth 2.0.

It could also support up to eight connections simultaneously. Since WiFi-PAN requires hardly any resources from the hardware, there would be no need to interrupt the devices' Wi-Fi adapters from their usual duty, and users would be able to surf the Web or be connected to a LAN simultaneously. Power consumption would also be lower than that of Bluetooth so that the talk time of wireless headsets would be tripled to 20 hours. The flip side is, however, that while many devices already have Wi-Fi.built in, accessories do not. Manufacturers would have to fit WiFi-PAN chips into mobile phones, keyboards and headsets. It is quite likely that the technology will be rolled out and supported by devices very soon. Intel could easily enable this support through the software and hardware on its Centrino laptops, which witl guarantee a huge reach. Bluetooth is not a requirement of the Centrino platform.