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On April 21st 2009 the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (a.k.a. Bluetooth SIG, http://www.bluetooth.com) will release the latest version of this wireless technology, aptly named Bluetooth 3.0. What is new and exciting about this new version is not only a higher transfer rate, but the use of IEEE 802.11 wireless network standard to achieve it.

Bluetooth was created to be a wireless technology for short-range devices, such as keyboards, mice, remote controls, cell phones, headsets and similar peripherals. Currently Bluetooth devices can operate at two transfer rates, Basic Rate (BR), which means 1 Mbps, or Enhanced Data Rate (EDR), which means 3 Mbps. It is always good to keep in mind that these figures are maximum theoretical values, in practice BR transmissions achieve a 721 Kbps transfer rate and EDR transmissions achieve a 2.1 Mbps transfer rate.

Bluetooth 3.0 will have the same transfer rates but when a transfer of a big chunk of data is necessary (for example, transferring a picture or movie between your laptop and your smart phone) IEEE 802.11 is used, at a transfer rate that will depend on the devices. For example, if both your cell phone and your laptop support 54 Mbps transfers, that is the one that will be used. In the worst case scenario you will have an 11 Mbps connection. Of course both devices must be Bluetooth 3.0 and have IEEE 802.11 wireless network enabled. No extra configuration will be necessary.

In summary, Bluetooth 3.0 will continue using the existing transfer rates, jumping to IEEE 802.11 only when necessary.

It is interesting to notice that the new Bluetooth 3.0 is somewhat different from what Bluetooth SIG had announced before: they said version 3.0 would use Ultra-Wide Bandwidth (UWB) technology in order to achieve higher transfer rates, but they end up deciding on using the widely and readily available IEEE 802.11 technology. We make this note because in several places you may end up reading that Bluetooth 3.0 uses UWB, but this information is not correct.

This new technology should be one of major impact for the savvy laptop user, as very soon it will be better to buy a portable computer with this version of the Bluetooth technology.