Manufacturers will soon start releasing devices with the new Bluetooth 5 protocol.

The Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) has officially launched version five of the wireless data transmission protocol, upgrading from  the current version 4.2 to specifically focus on ‘internet-of-things’ applications.

The new standard retains very low energy needs but provides double the maximum available bandwidth - 2Mbps.

Bluetooth is usually used as a short-range communications protocol, but version five doubles the signal distance, allowing devices to transmit up to 100 milliwatts of output power hundreds of metres, if conditions are right.

Bluetooth 5 supports larger, 255-byte broadcast packages, up from 31.

Bluetooth still runs in the congested and unlicensed 2.4 GHz frequency band used by wifi, cordless phones and other devices, but the new version includes a slot availability mask feature to detect and prevent interference on neighbouring bands.

The new Bluetooth protocol will appear in devices from early 2017, but they will not be branded any differently so as not to confuse consumers.

The new Bluetooth version remains backwards compatible with variants back to 1.1, the SIG said.