Motorola's Freescale spinoff, which includes the acquired XtremeSpectrum UWB developer, has FCC approval on its UWB chips: The company is saying that chips will ship almost immediately to OEMs, and that there may be early consumer products this Christmas that use ultrawideband (very short distance, high speed) wireless to connect video, audio, and other data among devices.
Freescale uses the leading proposal in the IEEE 802.15.3a task group: the "classical" direct sequence version of UWB. The proposal has foundered in the IEEE process because the Multiband OFDM Alliance (MBOA)--led by Intel with dozens of other members--has decided to push forward with their incompatible version of UWB that they believe has more promise, especially for peripherals. The IEEE still hasn't approved Freescale's approach because MBOA and other members of the task group are denying the super-majority required to accept the proposal.