The towel has been thrown in on an IEEE ultra wideband (UWB) standard.

After three years of dispute, the IEEE task group responsible for UWB, 802.15.3a, has decided to disband in a near unanimous vote.

The two UWB camps, direct sequence-UWB backer UWB Forum and MultiBand Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing UWB supporter WiMedia Alliance, said in a joint statement today that they will continue to move UWB into the market and concur that, at this stage in UWB market development, “a more prudent course of action is necessary to allow the market to move forward with the commercialization of multiple UWB technologies."

That does not mean competition between the two decidedly different approaches to UWB will lessen, however. The short-range personal area network technology that allows high speed sends, mainly targeting video is expected to have a strong presence in the wireless market as the connected home continues to form. Major semiconductor players in consumer electronics, like Intel and Texas Instruments, have come out in support of technology.

"The vote to kill the IEEE 802.15.3a UWB standards effort was one of irony,” stated Eric Broockman, CEO of Alereon, a WiMedia UWB player. “After more than two and a half years of discussions without a decision being reached, the IEEE has unanimously voted to kill the 802.15.3a proposed standard and quit wasting everyone's time.

According to Martin Rofheart, director of UWB Operations at UWB Forum member company Freescale: “While it is unfortunate that this did not happen, we believe meaningful standards are ultimately made by the market.”

According to Alereon’s Broockman: “Bluetooth technology was brought to fruition in much the same way -- independent groups worked to create competing standards solutions and the market decided which version was the strongest and most likely to support innovation and consumer buy-in."