More than a millennium after his death, the name of a 9th century Danish king, Harald Bluetooth, has been revived for a technology that promises to infiltrate every aspect of our lives in the early years of the 21st century.

Conceived by Ericsson, the Swedish telecommunication equipment supplier, in 1994, Bluetooth is a short-range wireless technology that promises to banish the cables that connect our computers to each other as well as to printers, personal digital assistants (PDAs), MP3 players, scanners and keyboards.

It could also be integrated into other items, such as stereos, video recorders and even fridges, which you could then control from your PDA while sitting in the lounge.

"Bluetooth will fundamentally change the organisation of our lives," says Laureen Cook, head of mobile at KPMG Consulting. It will mean that we are more efficient and have more time. It will change our lives in the same way as the internet has done, she says, and end up as something that many people could not imagine life without.

After some false starts and delays, it is now possible to glimpse just what the future may hold. Bluetooth PC cards for laptops and mobile phones started to appear late last year. These allow users to connect their laptops to the internet without the need to plug them physically into the phone.

However, putting devices on to the market so early might have been a mistake. Current devices are manufactured according to Bluetooth version 1.0B, which may not be compatible with the yet-to-be finalised version 1.1, and thus all future devices. Early adopters may be stuck with a technology that cannot fulfil its promise.

One of Bluetooth's touted strengths was that these sort of incompatibilities never occur. In an attempt to ensure this, the roughly 2,000 companies which are members of the Bluetooth Special Interest Group go to some lengths to talk to each other. This includes organising conferences called 'wireless fests'.

Open only to engineers, these are designed to allow engineers from the various manufacturers to exchange ideas and make sure their devices talk to everyone else's without pressure from marketing departments and management.

The core software or basic functionality involved in Bluetooth is difficult to create, says Steve Maynard, technology strategist at Psion Connect, which will be bringing Bluetooth PC cards and a USB (universal serial bus) adapter to market in April or May. It must be able to support any type of application from file sharing to sending voice, music and even video.

Also, the security concerns are complex: Bluetooth must do two seemingly incompatible things. On the one hand, it has to allow myriad devices to communicate together, and on the other, it must make sure that none of the devices can be hacked into. An insecure Bluetooth, one where sensitive files could be stolen from a laptop merely if it was in the vicinity of a hacker, would be a disaster.

These security concerns are part of the reason for the delay in the mass production of Bluetooth devices, says Ms Cook. "However, once people get a warm, fuzzy feeling about security, the sky's the limit in terms of applications," she enthuses.

At present, there is a shortage of Bluetooth chips which explains why many devices will not be appearing until the middle of the year, at the earliest, says Steve Medina, director of wireless strategy at Toshiba, the Japanese electronics manufacturer. Assuming the component shortage problem is resolved, Toshiba plans to introduce a Bluetooth laptop this summer, and a projector which would allow presentations from a laptop without plugging it in, later this year.

Another big issue for Bluetooth is ease of use. In corporations, employees have systems administrators to set Bluetooth up for them. For the home user, on the other hand, Bluetooth must be extremely easy to use, even transparent. This aspect of Bluetooth is still being developed, says Ms Cook.

So, although in the corporate market we should see big developments next year, the home market might not take off until 2005.

Price levels

If security, compatibility and ease-of-use issues can be overcome, price is the only barrier to ubiquity. That is why there has been talk of achieving a wholesale price of $5 for Bluetooth chips. Reaching this price point will depend on companies such as UK-based Cambridge Silicon Radio, which have managed to squeeze Bluetooth functionality on to one chip.

CSR's chips cost around $8-$9 each, says Glen Collinson, marketing director and co-founder of CSR, but the $5 price-point is in sight.

Companies such as CSR also have the task of ensuring that Bluetooth chips consume minimal amounts of power so the technology can be used on portable battery-powered devices.

So when will we be living in a Bluetooth world?

As was the case when mobile phones were introduced, Ms Cook expects business users to be the first to take up Bluetooth. The ability automatically to synchronise data and connect to the corporate network, wherever they may be in the office, could be too much to resist.

"We need a momentum and critical volume to get Bluetooth going," says Mr Maynard. Bluetooth was damaged by talk of having fridges talking to doorbells, but there will be some very valuable real-world applications.

The "killer applications" are the simple ones, he says, such as the ability to synchronise phone numbers between a phone, PDA and laptop. He expects Bluetooth to be integrated into MP3 players and digital cameras to allow easy cordless transfer of music and images between devices.

The floodgates will open in the next few months as increasing numbers of Bluetooth devices come to market, says Tara Mullally, product marketing manager for Bluetooth at US-based 3Com, which will be bringing a PC card and a LAN access point to market. This will allow seven Bluetooth notebook computers to connect to a corporate LAN.

Paul Cockerton, head of marketing communications at the Symbian consortium, which includes Bluetooth functionality in the operating systems it licences to PDA and phone manufacturers, expects to see a lot of different devices by 2002 or 2003.

So, in the next few months, Bluetooth's main use will be limited to connecting laptops to corporate LANs, an area where other established standards reign supreme. The future, though, is promising. With almost every computing, software and consumer device company involved it is hard to see how it can fail, says Ms Cook