Cellular-News picks up on a new report from ABI Research entitled Ultrawideband: WiMedia, DS-UWB, or CWave? which predicts that there will be nearly 300 million ultrawideband (UWB) shipments by 2011.

"The collapse of the UWB standards process was widely seen as a major faux pas," says principal Analyst Stuart Carlaw, "but those inside the industry viewed it as the shackles being removed."

And Carlaw says UWB isn't threatened by new technologies like 802.11n. "It is clear that UWB and 802.11n will co-exist and be powerful allies for each other," he says.

Still, there are global regulatory issues remaining. Carlaw says there's a real need to find a common band of spectrum that can be used worldwide, ideally between 7GHz and 8.5GHz, considering that Europe recently approved support for 6GHz to 8.5GHz, while Japan is soon to ratify 7GHz to 10GHz.

ABI's press release is here.