"In 2025, Garmin announced that they would end their certification for ANT+ devices, blaming changes in wireless communication regulations. This is likely to lead to future devices dropping ANT+ support in favour of BLE."
That's interesting. As the article says, ANT's main use case is in commercial gym equipment. What the article doesn't say is the reason: it excels at gathering data for "group fitness". ANT is a connectionless protocol so in a situation where you have two dozen transmitters and you need to get data from all of them, your receiver simply has to listen and record whatever devices it sees and let the user software (possibly managing a gym leaderboard for a spin class) decide which ones to track.
Contrast with BLE where you would have to make a connection to each device. The overhead of connecting and disconnecting, in addition to being power-prohibitive, takes too long. Some manufacturers have workarounds to enable use of their BLE products in a group fitness environment, but they are pretty much lacking.
It'll be interesting to see how the problem is solved if indeed ANT+ does go away.
BLE could do that too via advertising packets. I don't know if any devices actually do though.
Also the connection process isn't power-prohibitive for BLE, and it doesn't have to take a long time. It's just that most Bluetooth software stacks suck balls. Basically only Apple's is good.
As I recall BLE only supports hosts connecting to 7 peripherals simultaneously which is a bit rubbish, but if you're a gym with some custom ANT+ receiver you can definitely get a custom BLE receiver that can connect to more devices (assuming someone makes such a thing).
Many devices put the data into the Manufacturer-specific part of the advertising packet. It's a workaround. The problem is that it's non-standard so if you're a provider of data management for group fitness you have to have custom code for each manufacturer (and sometimes different devices from the same manufacturer). And it's especially fun when the manufacturer's published data spec doesn't match what the device actually puts out!
I don't know how difficult it would be to connect, grab a bunch of data and disconnect from 24 BLE devices in a one-second period, which is pretty much what you'd need to be an effective workaround for ANT+. In a competitive environment, data from each device changes very rapidly.
The ANT+ article was really interesting and it seems like a real shame that it's going the way of the dodo. Now I know what those little status symbols are on some of the gym equipment. Seems like a great protocol for the use case, but nit massively surprising it couldn't survive on that niche alone. Shame.
My impression was part of the issue was ANT is a proprietary Garmin protocol and so never really gained traction or imprint beyond those devices. Without meaning to sound too critical or supportive of BLE, I think something more open would be better for that area anyway.
I didn’t know ANT+ was “failed”, I use it all the time with my Garmin products. It’s cheap and it works better than Bluetooth.
I have ANT+ cadence and heart rate sensors. Lights, camera, Varia radar and power meter.
Some of that can be done with Bluetooth but realistically not all at the same time.
Anyone that’s run a smart trainer in a group with others will know that ANT+ is generally more reliable than Bluetooth too.
Apple refuse to support ANT+ so I need a dongle for my Mac and it’s the reason I don’t have an Apple Watch. No biggie.