pening the curtains perhaps. Streamed is for moving video from device to device. Interactive is for gaming and other interactive pursuits (keep an eye on the teapot and the kettle they might starting placing bets against each other). Conversational is for conversational devices - teddy bears that talk to each other and/or respond to a TV programme - hideous but here. Within the WiFi 802.11 e QOS standards process these applications have been accommodated with the extended data channel access wireless media extension that supports background and best effort and video and voice bearers simultaneously on a 20-MHz time multiplexed channel aggregated into an eight-level queue at the access point. This is a world away from the original contention-based medium access control that has been the basis for WiFi systems to date. In practice, it will probably work reasonably well most of the time, which remarkably enough seems to be acceptable to most consumers. Similarly, Bluetooth 2.0 EDR now supports three simultaneous traffic streams for voice, data and device control. One suggestion is that Bluetooth 3.0 will extend this parallel approach by supporting WiFi at 2.4 and 5 GHz. Bluetooth would then become by default a local area radio access management protocol rather than a specific physical layer standard. Together with Network Software - Energy Management and Control ZigBee this would seem to address most of the foreseeable local area machine-to-machine requirements. 18.7 Femtocells as an M2M Hub? An alternative is to consider the role that femtocells might play in the corporate, specialist and consumer M2M proposition. In corporate applications we have said that machines are sometimes positioned deep within a building. The loss from an outdoor cell into a building interior can be anything between a few dB to more than 40 dB. In these situations a femtocell or femtocells can be installed to provide coverage. Similarly, specialist machine-to-machine applications may need to be supported underground and fem- tocells would 