The Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG), the body that manages the technical standard that defines one of the most widely deployed communications protocols in the world, has announced the formation of a mesh network working group – with the goal of adding mesh networking functionality to the Bluetooth standard in 2016. This is big news for the protocol, which is currently installed in virtually every smartphone, as well as a whole host of legacy phones and other devices. The mesh approach needs to add the new functionality to the standard, while avoiding backwards-compatibility issues with the Bluetooth Low Energy (4.1 and 4.2) that was marketed heavily as an IoT-ready protocol – as well as the older legacy versions. “The Bluetooth…