Nordic Semiconductor said on October 29, 2026 that it is the first company to prove Bluetooth High Data Throughput (HDT) in silicon. HDT is an upcoming addition to Bluetooth Low Energy that raises the top speed from 2 Mbps to as much as 7.5 Mbps. The Bluetooth SIG expects to release it in late 2026, so for now this is a working demo of a draft feature, not a product you can buy.
What HDT changes in Bluetooth LE
The Bluetooth SIG described the feature in a July 2026 blog post, and the draft specification is public. The radio still runs at 2 million symbols per second, but HDT packs more bits into each symbol with QPSK and QAM modulation. That gives five rates: 2, 3, 4, 6 and 7.5 Mbps. Every rate uses forward error correction, so the receiver can repair some damaged bits without a retransmission.
Packets get much longer, up to several thousand bytes. A long packet is split into blocks with their own checksums, and the receiver acknowledges blocks selectively, so a burst of interference costs only the damaged blocks. The rate can change packet by packet, and devices can optionally share link quality feedback such as RSSI and signal-to-noise ratio to pick it.
Security gets a bump too. The message integrity check grows from 32 bits to 64 or 128 bits, and the draft adds a new encryption key schedule and opportunistic encryption. The SIG's own example: a file of several megabytes that takes about 16 seconds today would take about 4 seconds over HDT.
What Nordic actually showed
Nordic's announcement is short. It does not name the chip or give measured throughput. It says HDT will reach developers through the same software, tools and developer experience Nordic customers use now, so a product team would not need a new stack or a new supplier to try it. The company will demonstrate HDT at electronica 2026 in Munich (November 10 to 13), hall C6, booth 159, and is taking registrations of interest at nordicsemi.com/BluetoothHDT.
Why a smart home cares
Most sensors send a few bytes at a time and gain nothing from 7.5 Mbps. The gain is in bulk transfers: firmware updates over Bluetooth, audio clips for voice devices, logs and images from battery-powered gadgets. A shorter transfer means less radio time, which matters for coin-cell and AA devices. Over-the-air updates for Bluetooth devices are the obvious candidate, though neither the SIG nor Nordic has said when HDT will appear in specific products.
HDT changes the modulation, so both ends of the link need a radio that supports it. Nordic's own wording, proving the feature "in silicon", points to new hardware rather than a software update for phones, hubs or ESP32 boards already in use. Neither source says how HDT devices will negotiate with older ones, so expect today's 1M and 2M PHYs to stay in use for a long time.