Mixed signals - ZigBee aims to be a standard for industrial low-power radio, but we might never see full compatibility between modules that support it

We are now - if the vendors involved are to be believed - living in the age of ZigBee. Like Bluetooth, it mainly operates in the licence-exempt industrial, scientific and medical (ISM) band around 2.4GHz. Unlike Bluetooth, which is predominantly used for wireless headsets, it is intended for short range data communications between `intelligent´ devices. This puts in firmly in the industrial and commercial sector, as opposed to Bluetooth which now sits almost exclusively in the consumer space. The focus on industrial and not consumer applications means ZigBee faces a difficult challenge; it needs to offer the performance demanded by industrial and commercial applications, but with a competitively low price tag when compared to existing proprietary implementations - both wired and wireless - in a highly fragmented marketplace