The Begining of the End for ANT+ Wireless

First off, no, your ANT+ devices aren’t going to stop working. In fact, companies are not only supporting them going forward, but will continue to make ANT+ devices for some time to come. Instead, ANT+ (or more technically, Garmin), has announced a policy change that effectively and officially ceases the development of new ANT+ standards. Though practically speaking, that mostly happened long ago.

The core reason for this change is the European Union’s Radio Equipment Directive (simply called EU RED), which will ultimately take full effect next summer (it’s currently in a transitional phase). That directive covers a flotilla of different areas, but one of the most applicable pieces is that it requires authentication and encryption for wireless communications of personal information. Or at the least, it requires manufacturers to make you aware when data is being transmitted without such protections.

While ANT+ has long offered the ability to authenticate and encrypt data streams, it hasn’t been implemented in common profiles like heart rate or cycling power. Garmin says that to do so going forward would effectively break backward compatibility as it significantly increases the payload sent in any message. Given the landscape of devices and Bluetooth in 2025, there’s virtually no appetite from other manufacturers to re-create the wheel when it comes to ANT+.

As a result, Garmin is making a bunch of changes around the certification side, development, and program side. None of these ANT+ changes will impact consumers in any way, anytime soon. However, there are some other Garmin changes that will soon start to impact consumers.

Let’s dive into it – but first, it’s important to understand a tiny bit of backstory here, to see the long term challenges that lie ahead.

A Bit of Backstory:

Regardless of how you feel about ANT+ (or Garmin’s ownership of it), it has remained as the most stable thing in the sports tech universe for almost two decades. I say ‘stable’, because it forced companies to align to a standard, which made communications and interoperability seamless for devices like heart rate sensors and cycling power meters. There’s no question that cycling power meters wouldn’t have taken off if we were still back in the days of proprietary SRM wireless, or wired PowerTap SL hubs. And certainly, as the Bluetooth power meter profile has (and continues to) demonstrate – it’s far from a reliable standard. In a review set for tomorrow, I’ll show how a popular watch doesn’t seem to implement this decade-old Bluetooth power meter standard correctly.

Of course, Bluetooth Low Energy (the direct competitor to ANT+, versus full-blown Bluetooth used for audio that’s a different beast), quickly gained popularity in the early 2010’s after the consortium announced standard around fitness devices, notably the heart rate strap first. While companies like Samsung and Sony had adopted ANT+ in their phones, it was Apple’s decision to skip it that ultimately doomed ANT+. In fact, to this day, the mere mention of ANT+ in front of Apple employees in the know, is akin to smearing poop on the bathroom stall (seriously). It should be noted, for funsies, that Fitbit actually used to use ANT for communications between their early devices and the initial wireless adapter for your computer.

It’d be remiss to write an article about ANT+, without mentioning Dynastream (based in Cochrane, Alberta). That’s the original company behind ANT+, that Garmin acquired in 2006. The founder of Dynastream would eventually go on to found 4iiii in 2010, maker of power meters and many other products over the last 15 years. Still, despite Garmin’s ownership of ANT+, it was never really a meaningful problem for competitors. The (significant) value in having a common interoperability standard far outweighed the very small licensing fee these companies paid to Dynastream/Garmin. Consumers saw that value, and gravitated towards products that had standards in place.

The Tipping Point:

A key part of any device communication on either ANT+ or Bluetooth smart are so-called sport/sensor/device profiles.

Think of a sensor/device profile as a way to define how certain types of devices communicate. For example, there’s a heart rate device profile for heart rate sensors. Or the cycling power meter one, and so on. Companies that have a stake in these profiles come together to try and create a single cohesive standard. For ANT+, there are dozens of these profiles. Some companies like SRAM did an exceptional job of each new product they launched, they created an open profile for it (such as Dropper Post or ANT+ shifting). And Garmin largely did the same as well for each new product.

In the case of ANT+, this process was highly regulated, and sometimes (ok, most times) a wee bit slow. But if a company had a vision for the profile and a specific product launch timeframe/date, it was generally pretty efficient. It became less efficient the more companies got involved, or if the company didn’t have a specific product launch date. Said differently: If you danced your own dance with purpose, you could get a standard profile pretty darn quickly. If you involved a massive committee of competitors or were wishy-washy on dates, it dragged on for years. One only needs to see the much-requested Aero sensor profile as example of that. And there are many more.

However, the Bluetooth SIG side had its own issues. These profiles were coming hot and heavy, but often driven by players that frankly didn’t have any business being part of that profile. We’d see automotive companies involved in the cycling power meter profile, for example. Thus, that profile still suffers plenty of problems to this day as it doesn’t really capture everything that power meters did 10 years ago, let alone today.

Still, by the mid-late 2010’s, most of the core sports profiles used were available in Bluetooth, including Bluetooth footpods, Bluetooth power meters, Bluetooth heart rate sensors, Bluetooth Speed & Cadence sensors, and Bluetooth FTMS (for smart trainer control). Likewise, by that time, most of the chipsets used were dual ANT+/Bluetooth Smart. Almost every sensor made since 2016ish has been dual ANT+/Bluetooth Smart, albeit, it wasn’t until a few years later when multi-channel Bluetooth chipsets became commonplace, ensuring users could connect to their heart rate strap from more than one device at once (a problem primarily in the indoor training space).

As a result, Bluetooth finally became not only viable for sports usable, but just as reliable in most scenarios. And in some cases, it handled wireless interference better than ANT+ did.

How ANT+ Ends:

As I mentioned earlier on, the single biggest dagger to ANT+ is the EU RED, and the need to encrypt data. All of this would require a massive overhaul of ANT+, breaking backward compatibility with tens (if not hundreds) of millions of devices. Setting aside whether or not consumers actually want their live heart rate data at the gym encrypted, that’s where we find ourselves. As a result, Garmin has announced the following changes:

– They are discontinuing membership programs/fees: Up until now, there were different membership tiers of ANT+ that companies/startups could join. These had fees, though relatively minor. Still, Garmin says it wouldn’t be right to charge companies for a membership that doesn’t have long-term viability in it.
– They are discontinuing certification programs: Companies could submit products to be certified as compliant with standards. Some companies like Wahoo took this quite seriously, and sent everything. As of March 31st, ANT+ will stop accepting certification submissions. And as of June 30th, they’ll stop certifying new products.
– They are ceasing development of new ANT+ Profiles: No surprise here, there’s no new development/expansion of ANT+ profiles.
– They are however continuing to ensure ANT+ is available on silicon: This ensures that ANT+ is still available on chipset providers for a long time to come. As one might expect, there are millions of devices both from a sensor and display (e.g. watch/bike computer) standpoint that still want to use ANT+ connections. Garmin says they’re working to ensure these chipset providers continue to make dual ANT+/Bluetooth chipsets.
– All documentation to be made fully available online: Certain tier ANT+ members could access more detailed documentation than lower tiers. This basically makes all ANT+ documents available to everyone.

All of this basically means that your ANT+ devices will continue to work just fine, and we’ll actually probably continue to see ANT+ devices made by companies like Garmin/Wahoo/etc for quite some time as well. That’s because there are workarounds to the EU RED requirements, such as notifying the user. Or, simply assuming that portions of the EU RED will get delayed yet again.

In fact, we’re already seeing Garmin introduce some mitigations. In recent Garmin watch/bike computer beta firmware versions, you’ll see a new connection option type shown:

A Lot of Gaps:

Now going back to that initial excitement period in the 2010’s, standards-based profiles largely halted. Most companies, including Garmin, saw the Bluetooth SIG as a hopeless entity more concerned with putting in place roadblocks than progress. We saw companies like Polar and Wahoo – who used to have significant pretense on the Bluetooth SIG’s (committee groups), significantly reduce involvement. As a result, there’s been no new sports/fitness profiles in nearly a decade.

Thus while it’s easy for many consumers to dismiss ANT+ as irrelevant, it’s very much still apart of certain scenes – the biggest being cycling. Things get really messy, really quick.

Got a cycling radar (like a Varia Radar device)? Yup, that’s almost exclusively on ANT+. The only Bluetooth implementations are private/proprietary implementations that are unique to each company. Even radars from Bryton, Magene, and others all use ANT+ as the primary protocol.

Got wireless shifting or Di2? Those too are on ANT. In the case of SRAM/Campagnolo/FSA, that’s broadcasting your gear and battery status on the ANT+ shifting protocol. In the case of Shimano, that’s using their proprietary ANT (but not ANT+) protocol. Of course, that’s resulted in all sorts of messiness. But there is absolutely *zero* Bluetooth alternative for any of these companies right now.

How about cycling lights? If you want those cycling lights connected to your Wahoo/Garmin/Hammerhead/COROS/whatever bike computer, that’s using ANT+. Sure, there are, again, proprietary Bluetooth implementations out there. But they only work within that specific companies ecosystem (thinking of Lezyne as an example).

Sure, for heart rate data the standard is well understood on Bluetooth. It simply doesn’t matter whether or not you have an ANT+ or Bluetooth Smart heart rate strap, they both work perfectly fine. There are minor pros & cons to each, but for 99.9% of consumers, it just doesn’t matter.

So what happens to mitigate these gaps?

What Happens Next for Consumers:

The answer to this section headline is simple: Back to walled gardens.

Of course, that was already mostly the trend the last 4-5 years. Unfortunately, the COVID era further cemented that by eliminating various interoperability conferences/events that had occurred prior. Adding to that is the heavy shift towards startup tech companies that have largely eschewed standards as well, be it protocol or file format.

While one might assume Bluetooth SIG’s would be the answer going forward, history and current company commentary have very clearly indicated otherwise. I’ve yet to find a single sports tech company that wants to deal with pushing forward new device profiles with the Bluetooth SIG. Companies don’t see that as a viable route to success, and certainly not worth their time and headaches.

Instead, companies like Garmin say they’re going to work to make private profiles more available. I asked Garmin for example about the radar profile, which Garmin has had a private Bluetooth implementation available for years now. They give that to some companies upon request, to implement within their apps. They didn’t have (yet) a specific firm answer for how that’ll look going forward, but instead pointed to Wahoo’s early release a decade ago of their trainer control protocols as an example of the likely direction.

For those that don’t remember the early 2010 protocol days of Wahoo smart trainers, they basically created their own trainer control standard, and then published the API/SDK on a website for all to use. That quickly made Wahoo’s KICKR trainer protocol the defacto standard for a period before the ANT+ FE-C standard came into play.

Garmin has plenty of history of doing variants of that, both within the ANT+ sphere, but also their Connect IQ developer programs. But whether they actually do so is a different matter. In the trainer space, Garmin/Wahoo/Elite/Zwift all kinda quietly work together on various protocol things, but they don’t often reach the finish line in a public way.

The sports tech industry needs some replacement for what the ANT+ Symposium did for over a decade, both in terms of an event to talk protocols (with competitors no less), but also the backend process to keep companies aligned to standards for the other 51 weeks of the year. Unfortunately, I don’t see how that happens going forward.

Until then, the good news is our ANT+ devices will continue to keep working.

With that, thanks for reading!