The Curse of the Wires. The Bane of the Boxes. The Misery of the Rat’s Nest. Whatever you like to call it, it’s practically over. Next year the box manufacturers start to put wireless USB interfaces in their products.
“All the big companies are going to have wireless USB in their products next year. TVs, PCs, Set Top Boxes, everyone is going to have it,” says J.J.Yamaguchi, executive vice president and member of the board of NEC Electronics.
For NEC Electronics, which is making the ultra-wideband (UWB) chip-sets for wireless USB, that means the market is now underway. "The wireless USB market starts this year", says Yamaguchi.
A number of US companies such as Alereon, Wiquest, Pulse-Link, and the UK company Artimi have produced UWB chip-sets for wireless USB capable of 1Gbps data transfer rates, while Pulse-Link has a second generation technology in sample mode capable of 2Gbps.
However, without the box manufacturers putting wireless USB interfaces in their products, UWB technology was never going to get very far as a practicable proposition for consumer electronics communications.
It the Japanese consumer electronics companies are now going to do just that, then there’s the prospect of an end to that unsightly mass of cabling we have all had to endure for too long.
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