Alereon CEO's Thoughts on Cable-Free USB

Alereon's helmsman Eric Broockman made a post in his company blog raising doubts about the efficiency of the first Cable-Free USB hub and the interoperability with the future Certified Wireless USB devices. Well, he may not be completely impartial on this issue since his company has a high stake in Wireless USB chip business. Regardles, he did have a few good points.

In his brief post, he pointed out that Freescale's current UWB chip can only offer Belkin's Cable-Free USB hub 114Mbps, with realistic throughput of 50Mbps. That translates to 6 times the speed of the original USB in real-world scenarios. If this holds true, then there will be only a few practical applications like printers, keyboards and mice. Granted, you can sync your iPod wirelessly too, but the time you save by transferring tunes with "old school" method should outweigh the cost of the hub. For all we know, early Certified WUSB host will be faster, but not as efficient as wired USB 2.0.

Another thing he talked about is whether or not Cable-Free USB will live in harmony with Certified Wireless USB. His answer is no, and he argued that if you invest in Cable-Free USB products and then mix them with Certified Wireless USB stuff, the end result is an overall lower speed due to interference in this heterogeneous network. He's implying that consumers should pick a standard that offers a better future roadmap and compatibility. We still need to check with our sources to see how bad this interference might affect user experience.

Filed under USB Technologies