Recently announced, Bluetooth 3.0 is the new Bluetooth wireless standard currently in development by the Bluetooth SIG and Wi-Media Alliance. The new standard is reportedly up to 130 times as fast as current Bluetooth wireless transfer speeds, and builds upon the previous standards. Though we most likely won’t see any of these devices on the shelves until early 2008, the technology has the potential to revolutionize the consumer electronics industry.
Faster
Bluetooth 3.0 will transfer three 8-megapixel pictures (which took 11 seconds each to transfer via Bluetooth 2.0) in one second. With reported transfer rates of 400 megabits (50 Megabytes) per second in close proximity, and 100 megabits (12.5 Megabytes) per second at 10 meters, high-quality streaming video is a definite possibility, along with a host of other applications that are simply impractical with the current transfer rates.

Streaming
With Bluetooth 3.0, camcorders will stream video footage or still photos to Bluetooth wireless technology enabled televisions and computers, digital cameras will stream photo slideshows to cell phones, and laptops will have the ability to wirelessly transfer presentations to a projector.

High bandwidth mitigates interference
Bluetooth 3.0 will operate in the 6-9 GHz range rather than the current 2.4 GHz range, eliminating the concern of interference from wireless networks and other devices that use the 2.4 GHz range.

Backwards compatibility
Best of all, Bluetooth 3.0 will be backwards compatible, so all of your old devices will be able to communicate with the new ones and vice versa. New devices will feature a 2.4 GHz Bluetooth radio on the same radio chip, or its own separate chip. But bear in mind that transfer speeds are only as fast as the slowest device, meaning that the two will exchange data at the slower, three-megabit rate of Bluetooth 2.0.

Bluetooth wireless technology has made some major strides in the past few years, and the new 2.1 and 3.0 standards have the potential to further push the envelope in consumer electronics, removing not only the wires, but the communication barriers between devices that have existed for years as well.

http://www.bluetooth.com/bluetooth/