I attended an Ultra-Wideband (UWB) event recently and was pleased to hear the moderator, Peter Meade (editor of UWB Insider), basically say "Let's get on it with already."

UWB should have been on the market a year ago. I first wrote about the technology in January 2003 and I was told back then, by multiple vendors, to expect to see it by Christmas of that year. Well, here we are a good year later and still nothing much has changed. Now I'm hearing that we'll see product by Christmas of this year. This time I know the silicon is ready, but I'm still not holding my breath.

The vendors have been stuck in a brutal standards battle, which The Economist does a good job of documenting. I think we're all well aware of the Betamax/VHS war and how that played out and I understand that nobody wants another standards battle on their hands. But there are other technologies out there that could pose real or perceived competition to UWB, namely Wi-Fi (to be followed by WiMAX), and they are already out there.

Furthermore, there is no reason why high-end A/V components can't succeed using proprietary UWB technology. It's not the ideal solution for the customer or vendor, but I have yet to see how it will prevent sales at this tier. And assuming one standard does prevail, there is no reason that dongle-like converters can't be used on proprietary devices to solve incompatabilities. Not an elegant solution, but easier to resolve than a Betamax box than won't play VHS.

UWB is an amazing technology and at a minimum is poised to eliminate dozens of annoying UWB and video cables in every home. But it could do so much more, provided it gets going quickly.