The Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) has recently published the 2016 roadmap for Bluetooth, the underlying technology of BLE beacons, announcing a series of updates to the technology with more powerful, further-reaching and faster features.

Among the upgrades are doubling of Bluetooth’s speed to 2Mbps, “without increasing energy consumption – this means data will be able to be transferred quicker, resulting in more responsiveness and less latency when using the tech.”

Mesh networking  is also being introduced, which “will allow lots of Bluetooth devices to unite in a single network, again increasing range to possibly cover a whole building, making it better for use in the home and in industrial applications.”

“There is significant demand from our members and the industry at large to enhance Bluetooth with the new capabilities we’re announcing today,” said Toby Nixon, chairman of the Bluetooth SIG board of directors. “Current projections put the market potential for IoT between $2 and $11.1 trillion by 2025. The technical updates planned for Bluetooth technology in 2016 will help make these expectations a reality and accelerate growth in IoT.”

Source: VentureBeat, Independent