Zigbee: Is it really that cheap?

With all these Zigbee-ready transceivers popping up as demo boards
offered by our traditional microcontroller companies, it looks nice
that a designer wouldn't have to spend more than $10-$15 for the
zigbee-specific electronics and microcontroller embedded with zigbee.

However, is there an extra cost? Do I just solder in the ICs that the
Zigbee alliance has blessed, and can now declare my product as
"Zigbee-ready"?

Or do I need to pay thousands to be a Zigbee member, and thousands
more to get a UL-like Zigbee approval by some 802.x.x agency?

Ideally, I would just like to buy the microcontroller with zigbee
embedded in it, and do my thing. And hopefully, by the time i'm done
with my application specific firmware/software, then the $5 micros and
transceivers are ready sometime next quarter or early next year.

(Distributors have come in to my place in recent months to push 900
MHz products that work in the unlicensed band. They say that if I want
basic functionality, just go with their 900 MHz products because I
cannot just sell a Zigbee-based product without spending thousands for
so-called certification).

valemike@yahoo.com (Mike V.) wrote in message news:<8188616d.0408040845.637761e9@posting.google.com>...
> With all these Zigbee-ready transceivers popping up as demo boards
> offered by our traditional microcontroller companies, it looks nice
> that a designer wouldn't have to spend more than $10-$15 for the
> zigbee-specific electronics and microcontroller embedded with zigbee.
> 
> However, is there an extra cost? Do I just solder in the ICs that the
> Zigbee alliance has blessed, and can now declare my product as
> "Zigbee-ready"?
> 
> Or do I need to pay thousands to be a Zigbee member, and thousands
> more to get a UL-like Zigbee approval by some 802.x.x agency?
> 
> Ideally, I would just like to buy the microcontroller with zigbee
> embedded in it, and do my thing. And hopefully, by the time i'm done
> with my application specific firmware/software, then the $5 micros and
> transceivers are ready sometime next quarter or early next year.

Chipcon already has 802.15.4 transceivers under $3 in very high
volume.
The HW and SW companies providing Zigbee/802.15.4 products join the
Zigbee Alliance, not you, unless you want to do your own Zigbee stack
and get an early look at the spec. The Zigbee layer spec is unreleased
but the 802.15.4 PHY/MAC specification was released over a year ago.