Helium has a go at Internet of Things thing – using ultra-low power tech

Seems that this does fix the 2 main problems with current solutions: security and encryption and a bit of smarts around power and band usage!

Here's hoping they help put these back into the open spec... (I know, who am I kidding, right? sigh)

I can think of many uses and not just in food service and health care for seeding these all over the place and that's just as temperature sensors. Furthermore, acting as the AP for a small local network would be valuable since it fulfills the security requirements. Now, how about some costs?

There are definitely situations where the switching of bands is used. Siemens use a dual band architecture in their wireless fire alarms. This allows them to meet the German VDS standard. Several other such platforms exist in the fire industry that also do this as they get a bigger allowance on attenuation and can therefore install with a longer range between nodes.

The bands used tend to be 868 and 433 rather than 2.4G but 2.4G hass advantages being more universal.