Newly merged ultrawideband consortiums report that the FCC has granted a waiver enabling their technology: The Multiband OFDM Alliance (MBOA) and The WiMedia Alliance, recently merged together, sent out an email just now that the FCC has approved a waiver that allows them to deploy their OFDM-based technology. MB-OFDM wasn't prohibited from use in the FCC-approved UWB frequency range, but there were issues about measurement that have been on the table for almost two years since the FCC declined to take a position on disallowing OFDM versus the "classic" mode of UWB which is championed by FreeScale.
Tim Higgins analyzes the response from the WiMedia Alliance ("we won!") and Freescale ("we won!"). Freescale expects to get a waiver under the same rule but are stating that they can achieve four times the data rate or use one-quarter the power as MB-OFDM.