Motorola and XtremeSpectrum say no fees if their UWB proposal wins; TI is trying to follow: The two camps in the IEEE 802.15.3a standard process have raised the ante by lowering the ante for approval of their flavor. Motorola and XtremeSpectrum will make their technology in this standard patent-royalty free. Texas Instruments would like to do so as well as part of the OFDM alliance they've formed, but haven't gotten the signoff from all of its partners.
This probably benefits consumers of the technology in that removing royalty costs will lower the bar to entry for manufacturers and reduce overall cost.
The head of XtremeSpectrum is wrong when he said that it's clear that for a standard to be confirmed, it must not have any licensing strings attached--it must be royalty free unless he meant this specific standard. Plenty of standards are encumbered by reasonable and customary licensing fees, and the companies involved in 802.15.3a had already signed or generally agreed to that as well.
The 802.15.3a standard will allow 100 to 480 Mbps of wireless data to be exchanged at very short range, from 10 to 30 meters, with the design focused on large file and streaming media exchange.