o Project proponents of Bluetooth named the technology after a 10th century Viking Called Harald Bluetooth.

o Bluetooth is a computing and telecommunications industry specification that describes how mobile phones, computers and personal digital assistants (PDAs) can easily interconnect with each other and with home and business phones and computers using a short-range wireless connection.

o Using this technology, users of cellular phones, pagers and PDAs such as the PalmPilot will be able to buy a three-in-one phone that can double as a portable phone at home or in the office, get quickly synchronized with information in a desktop or notebook computer, initiate the sending or receiving of a fax, initiate a print-out and have all mobile and fixed computer devices be totally coordinated.

o The technology requires that a low-cost transceiver chip be embedded in each device. Products with Bluetooth technology are expected to appear in large numbers beginning in 2000.

o Each device is equipped with a microchip tranceiver that transmits and receives in a previously unused frequency band of 2.45 GHz that is available globally (with some variation of bandwidth in different countries). In addition to data, up to three voice channels are available. Each device has a unique 48-bit address from the IEEE 802 standard. Connections can be point-to-point or multipoint.

o The maximum range is 10 meters. Data can be exchanged at a rate of 1 megabits per second (up to 2 Mbps in the second generation of the technology).