The new law to stop drivers holding mobile phones may have the side effect of boosting the fortunes of Bluetooth peripheral makers, as telecoms vendors will promote more expensive hands-free Bluetooth phones. Some surveys indicate that nearly 10 million people used mobile phones while driving last year, so there are a lot of potential customers.

Of course, some drivers claim that having a conversation on the phone doesn't affect their driving ability, but that's possibly because they are terrible drivers normally.

Perhaps the only people who could claim to be able to use a mobile phone and safely drive are TV presenters, who have to read a teleprompt screen while heeding instructions through an earpiece from the programme controller. The rest of us mere mortals do not cope so well when two demanding tasks compete for our attention.

Advances in the Bluetooth 1.2 specification, officially adopted last month, focus on combating interference from other wireless devices, such as wireless LANs, but there are also improvements to the quality of service for voice functions.

But for new Bluetooth devices to become more popular, vendors will also have to address problems with interoperability that are often experienced with current Bluetooth kit.

A couple of weeks ago, a colleague was trying in vain to get a laptop with a Bluetooth PC Card to talk to a Bluetooth-enabled printer.

The problems seemed to lie with the Windows Bluetooth stack rather than the adapter or printer hardware, but this will be small comfort to users who simply want things to work with the minimum of fuss.

The main enhancements in the new specification are adaptive frequency hopping (AFH), better voice processing and faster connection speeds. AFH should reduce interference from other transmitters in the 2.4GHz region, which could include 802.11b and 802.11g WLAN devices, cordless telephones and microwave ovens.

This is welcome. In our lab tests, data transfer rates for Bluetooth fell by up to a third when 802.11b devices were operating nearby. However, poor interoperability, not the data transfer rate, is still the main problem with Bluetooth.

The official Bluetooth membership site offers information on interoperability, and so-called unplugfests. Unplugfests are interoperability test events run by the Bluetooth Special Interest Group as "one of the key means to improve the interoperability of all Bluetooth devices being developed and released into the marketplace".

The results of these unplugfests would likely make interesting reading, but the Bluetooth SIG adds: "Each UnPlugFest is run as a CONFIDENTIAL event in a NEUTRAL location with no PUBLICITY". Why? Do the members of the Bluetooth SIG have something to hide?

These unplugfests are still going on; the next one is in San Francisco in February. The first devices to use the new Bluetooth specification are due for release about the same time.

If these new Bluetooth products are to be widely used, the interoperability and connection difficulties will have to be sorted out. This means no hastily assembled software, such as that packaged with early Bluetooth devices.