Perhaps the end of the line for Freescale's UWB chips: The first two companies that had committed to releasing Freescale UWB-based products--first in spring, then in July, now perhaps in September--told Wi-Fi Planet they've switched vendors. Belkin and Gefen confirmed the change, which seemed long coming. There are now no publicly announced plans for any manufacturer to choose Freescale UWB products. The company, a Motorola chipmaking spinoff, produces hundreds of products.

UWB offers very high speeds at short distances with the added advantage of having very little chance of interference among UWB devices or with other users of the same spectrum. (In fact, UWB has to be just above the noise floor for the long swath it's allowed to use in the US, or essentially imperceptible to existing wireless receivers and radios.)

Freescale through the firm it acquired pioneered UWB and was critical in moving it towards the potential of mainstream adoption and in getting the FCC to approve its use. But the company has never produced chips, despite predictions of "this year" since at least 2003, and engaged in a long, ugly fight with essentially everyone else in the industry. The rest of the industry, led by Intel, split off, and there's a lot of signals coming for near-term multiple vendor availability of Certified Wireless USB. The signals are more positive than before because it's not just public demonstrations, but plug-fests and announcements of reference designs.

Wi-Fi Planet cites analysts saying that Freescale's proprietary Cable-Free USB approach wasn't gaining traction, and that Freescale had apparently pushed back chip availability to 2007 "at the earliest, if ever."

Some equipment makers are miffed at the long delays in getting UWB to market, but it's clear that the two-plus years of standards wrangling had no positive effect on producing working chips.