Bluetooth licensing fees?

[Emil]

Is there a way to avoid fees, and still use BLE? Do I need to change UUIDs or leave them be?

If not can the nrf51822 be used to just use the pure 2.4 ghz protocol and DFU at the same time? Or is DFU BLE based? It is not crucial that we use BLE, just a wireless low power protocol with good range!

I just assumed it was free to use as long as I didn't want to have an official bluetooth logo or something like that! Isn't the bluetooth fee priced in the chip costs?

[Øyvind Karlsen]

Hi Emil,

To sell a BLE product you need to comply with the following:

• FCC regulatory requirements

• R&TTE regulatory requirements

• IC regulatory requirements

• Bluetooth compliance and certification

Please see the Regulatory and Compliance standards whitepaper, for more infomation about the Bluetooth compliance and certification, see this post as well as START B on the bluetooth SIG pages.

DFU is using our BLE stack, so it is not possible to utilize this service without using our SoftDevices. However it is possible to implement your own proprietary protocol that includes support for over-the-air firmware updates.

You can definitely create a proprietary protocol, and this would make you avoid the fees to Bluetooth SIG, however you still need to comply with the regulatory requirements.

Best regards,

Øyvind

[Jens Jespersen]

Øyvind - are you sure about this ? I'm quite sure, that you don't have to comply with FCC and IC unless you want to use your product in US/Canada. Whether you are using bluetooth or "just" another radio, you have to comply with R&TTE (which by the way is changed later this year to RE) A way to make certification cheeper is to use a radiomodule that has been tested. Then the certification should be easier. Jens