The Bluetooth 4.0 dominos are falling: Following up on our Apple Hearing Aid? Not So Fast… post on Friday 14 September, we have this post from the Official ReSound Blog: Cochlear Adopts GN ReSound’s 2.4 GHz Wireless Technology
Cochlear Pty… has entered into a Technology Development and License agreement with GN ReSound to leverage [their] 2.4 GHz wireless technology.
Cochlear offers implants and bone anchored hearing technologies for hearing impaired individuals who are unable to use ordinary hearing devices. The adoption of GN ReSound’s wireless technology by Cochlear reinforces the superiority of 2.4 GHz as a wireless platform.
One of the benefits of 2.4 GHz technology is that it enables the end-user to receive streamed sound directly without wearing an intermediary device around the neck. We know that eliminating body worn streamers and being as discreet as possible are priorities for hearing aid users. Currently, GN ReSound is the only hearing aid manufacturer to use 2.4 GHz wireless technology in our hearing aids.
This serves as a confirmation that the low latency wireless technology ReSound has implemented (via field programmable gate array (FPGA) architecture) in their excellent Alera and brand new Verso lines of hearing aids is, in fact very close to the final implementation of the “Made for Apple” hearing aids. However, neither the Alera nor Verso will be able to communicate directly with the iPhone 4s or 5 — That is the next model series.
Those of you with Advanced Bionics CI’s are also in line to get Bluetooth — In fact, you almost had it, as when the Harmony BTE speech processor came out in 2005, it already had the hardware hooks in the circuit, using the headpiece coil as an antenna. All it would have taken was adding the Broadcom Bluetooth chip, and it would have been there seven years ago.
7 Comments
Audiology_Slave
September 19, 2012 at 7:25 pmDan Schwartz
September 20, 2012 at 1:28 pmDoug
October 27, 2012 at 1:36 pmDan Schwartz
November 2, 2012 at 4:35 pmCE
November 14, 2012 at 4:54 pmmichael
December 4, 2012 at 9:36 pmDan Schwartz
December 5, 2012 at 8:59 am