WTRS Executive Interview

Interview with Mike Foley, Executive Director of the Bluetooth SIG.

December 4, 2007

George: Where did you come from and how did you find yourself one day waking up and now you're the executive director of the Bluetooth SIG?

Mike: Well, I first got involved with Bluetooth when I worked at Microsoft and I was at the time working on the Mobile Devices team. This was before the Smartphone platform had been released and I was a wireless architect so I was involved in how wireless fits within that platform. At the time there was a thing called Bluetooth that a couple of different companies had come to pitch to Microsoft. At a meeting after one of those pitches, we were talking and basically looking around the table and saying, "somebody has to figure out if this is important to us," and I said it sounded like pretty interesting technology and said I would spend a little time on it. That was back in early 1999 and it led to me working with the original companies on having Microsoft become a promoter within the Bluetooth SIG. I was Microsoft's board representative when we did become a promoter and for a couple of years I chaired the board of directors. During this time was when the SIG started to switch from being a purely volunteer organization to incorporating as its own unit and starting to hire some full time staff. In the 2003 time frame, I decided that instead of my involvement through Microsoft with Bluetooth to switch over and work for the Bluetooth SIG itself and come in to lead that organization. I have been doing that since March of 2003.

George: As part of that, what is the mission of the Bluetooth SIG for maybe those one or two of our readers who have never heard of Bluetooth? This may seem like a strange question, but we do uncover people from time to time who knew about Bluetooth but have not heard of the Special Interest Group.

Mike: Actually it isn't that strange of a question. When I am out and about its still very common to hear, "I knew about the technology, but I didn't know about the SIG itself or what the group does." So I think still not everyone knows about it. I think of the Bluetooth SIG mission as the three legs of a pyramid, if you will. One leg is the publisher and maintainer of the specifications. Now the distinction is that the Bluetooth SIG staff doesn't write the specifications, it's our members that do it. But we help them with that process and when the specification is final, it's the Bluetooth SIG that publishes the profiles, the core specifications and also the test specifications. So that is one key area. Then the second one is that we administer the qualification program. Any device that contains Bluetooth needs to go through this program to ensure that they implement those specs properly and work well with other devices. What's unique about the Bluetooth SIG is that through this qualification, we also grant those members that build devices the license to the intellectual property contained within the specifications. As I said, that is very unique to the Bluetooth SIG. As part of the membership agreement, all our members agree to cross license necessary claims to other members royalty-free and furthermore to allow the Bluetooth SIG to do that on their behalf as part of the qualification program. So that is very unique in the industry. Then the third leg of the pyramid is that we do a lot of education, marketing, PR, evangelism, cheerleading, whatever words you want to use, for the technology. And we do that to the members, to potential members, to folks like yourself, to media, to consumers, just to try to get people excited about Bluetooth and educate them about the use cases, where the technology is going, and obviously the messages are different depending on who you are speaking to and we really do span the complete spectrum.

George: And actually, if I can just make a comment, the Bluetooth SIG is one of the prototypes, when we look at groups like this, who has really done it right. You guys make it look really easy and I suspect that there has been just an immense amount of work behind the scenes and under the covers to make it that way.

Mike: Well it's really nice to hear you say that. I think your perception is correct. A ton of work is going on day in, day out in each of the elements of those areas and clearly when you are coming up with new specifications, there is a great deal of debate and differing opinions going into how something should be done. But then after those debates, you come up with what we hope will be the best specification, and publish that. We do try to keep that within the work groups and let their conversations be confidential within the work groups and then publish the resulting material.

George: Like I said, you guys make it look really easy.

Mike: I don't know who said this, it wasn't me, and I don't know if it was really said specifically about the Bluetooth SIG but more about the standards process in general, but it's making sausage: you don't necessarily want to see everything that happens to make it, but the end result is nice.

George: Yeah, it's important that the results taste good. We have a series of questions about from your point of view where you see the Bluetooth specification evolving and maybe some more specifics about the SIG mission. The Bluetooth SIG has recently united a number of different wireless technologies that were outside of the original Bluetooth radio technology, specifically Ultra Wideband, near field communications, and WiBree. I thought the important thing was that the Bluetooth SIG had a very direct platform that allows the SIG to integrate these other technologies into the specification. How do you see that driving the evolution of Bluetooth technology in the future and what do you think it means for this concept of the wireless personal area network?

Mike: I think that it is really one of the key enablers that if you take a systems approach to it, there is not really one technology, at least I haven't seen it yet, that does everything that the consumer wants to do or that the device manufacturer wants to enable in their device optimally. So you have to leverage the strengths of each technology to build that optimal solution. If you think about Ultra Wideband and how Bluetooth is going to enable that for high speed applications. Ultra Wideband, when you blast the data, is absolutely great if you need to move a huge file or stream high quality video. It works very, very well for that. But to maintain the link or to find the link it uses significantly more power with Ultra Wideband than Bluetooth, so being able to leverage Bluetooth for that portion of the system enables you to just switch the Ultra Wideband radio on when you do have that huge amount of data to blast and shut it off again. Right now Ultra Wideband takes a lot more gates and has bigger silicon and requires more current just in the standby mode than Bluetooth. Also people have been spending the last 7-8 years optimizing those modes and conditions for Bluetooth. So using the two radios cooperatively really leads you to a better solution than using either one independently. And I think we are looking at that with all of these new wireless protocols. Near field communication was another one that you mentioned. For many applications or many use cases, to be able to hold two devices close together to select which one you want to use and start the application running is very handy. And so we wrote into the specification how to enable that and last spring we were showing on a mobile phone how you can take a picture and then hold it next to the picture frame and have the picture transfer using Bluetooth. NFC (near field communications) was used to select that device. We did basically the same thing with a stereo and a headset. Conceptually that is really simple way to pair two devices, but you don't want to have to hold them there the whole time while the picture is transferring, or obviously with the headset you can't hold them that close together or you might as well not even use a headset. Again, being able to leverage the strengths of each technology really does make a stronger system.

George: It's so obvious now in hindsight. Quite frankly, one of the issues with Ultra Wideband was how do you pair the devices. I think truly pulling it under what I'll call the Bluetooth framework, allowed that to happen very easily and in a very straight forward manner, as far as a user is concerned. That is one of the things that we see as the power of that framework that is provided by the Bluetooth specification.

Mike: I agree with that wholeheartedly and I think that what we have done with bringing WiBree into the Bluetooth SIG and the plans with UWB (Ultra Wideband) is that we have painted the picture, I think very clearly, of how Bluetooth is going to evolve to where Bluetooth will be the optimal solution for connecting to any device your personal area network.

George: I'd like to look a little bit more at this idea of Bluetooth of more of a platform rather than a radio. I think that given the history, you hear Bluetooth and everyone immediately thinks radio. I think when we hear Bluetooth we think a platform for making it easy to integrate these different services into mobile devices. So how do you see this as affecting the Bluetooth specification as it evolves in the years ahead and do you have any other thoughts on this particular area?

Mike: I think one are that Bluetooth was also very unique is our specifications that includes the entire protocol stack. Most specifications focus on one to maybe at most three layers of the protocol stack. If you think of the IEEE, they focus typically on layer one and two. The IETF focuses on layer three, above that W3C and maybe the presentation layer. And the Bluetooth specification really spans that entire area. And so now we can add new components into the layer one and two, but still leverage all those upper layers. Over time, more of a realization will come into place that the converse is also true, that as we are adding these other radios, we will be able to continue to create new profiles or new use cases that can leverage the different radios. And so I think it's really a two-way street there. Right now, since we are really doing the work on the new radios, perhaps the fact that the software is going to be able to be leveraged over all those different radios and new applications that are developed will be able to take advantage of that as well, perhaps hasn't quite sunk in yet.

George: Yeah. I think we completely agree with you there. Do you see any challengers on the horizon to Bluetooth? Is there anything that can really challenge Bluetooth in this personal area network application space?

Mike: Well I think for different applications there are still questions as to what technologies will be widely implemented as we move forward. How wireless USB will play out to connecting devices to printer devices. A printer is a very interesting device. Typically today a wireless printer, if it's more an office-type printer, has Wi-Fi and if its more a personal or photo type printer it has Bluetooth. How that evolves I think will be interesting. Will a printer continue to use Wi-Fi, will it use wireless USB (Ultra Wideband), or will it use Bluetooth and Ultra Wideband? If you are going to put the Ultra Wideband radio in a printer, would you put both wireless USB and Bluetooth in there? I think there still are some questions that need to be answered as we move forward and I think a lot of manufacturers are still looking into the various possibilities. Obviously I am of the opinion that the Bluetooth solution is going to be the best for those types of scenarios but I still think there are questions that need to be answered and still some convincing of people in the industry that Bluetooth is the optimal solution.

George: If I could, I'd like to backtrack in the interview just a bit and ask a question more about the promoter board. I don't have the list of promoters in front of me, but my recollection is that you actually have a broad swath of companies from different industry segments sitting on the Bluetooth promoter board. The promoter board reflects the ecosystem that is growing around Bluetooth. Has this been either a hindrance or a help in driving the development of Bluetooth?

Mike: I actually think it's been a big help because the promoters are able to take a longer term look at how Bluetooth should evolve and what needs to be done. They are not necessarily looking at just what will show good revenue for the next quarter. I think that has enabled some of the decisions and some of the directions to really build on the future and take the longer-term approach. I think that it has been very good for the technology.

George: Is there anything that we didn't ask you that we should have? Or, are there any other points that you would like to make about Bluetooth or the Bluetooth SIG?

Mike: Maybe one point about each thing. If we start with the Bluetooth SIG, next year is the tenth anniversary of when the Bluetooth SIG was formed and when the first Bluetooth specification was published. And so as an organization, we are going to try to make a lot of noise about that and talk about the history and where things are going. So you will see a lot interesting plays off the ten year theme and anniversary. That will start at the Bluetooth SIG party that we hold at CES each year and will be a theme that you will hear quite a bit of next year. So that is a neat thing; that the organization will be a decade old next year. So we are going to make a lot of noise around that. We talked about the major technology enhancements, or big ticket items coming as we move forward. But one thing on the technology side that is kind of interesting to note is there is also evolutionary-type enhancements that are being made, smaller things that continually make the products for the heavy users of Bluetooth better today. One example of that is that people are looking at adding the voice recognition engine into the headset, rather than today most transfer the sound and use the engine in the phone. People are thinking with that in there, you really could use that headset as a much richer control device for answering the phone or placing the calls or putting the device into pairing mode. Again these are enhancements that we think will make the technology easier to use. They may not be as exciting as high speed or the ultra low power work we are doing, but really are evolving the initial use cases and enhancing those such that Bluetooth will remain very, very popular for years and years to come.

More information about Bluetooth SIG here...

This interview ran in our December 4, 2007 newsletter issue.