Is zigbee a real innovation?

I am surveying various articles on zigbee and comparing it with other alternative technologies. I read application of zigbee as 'remotely monitoring various types of sensors for air conditioning, lightening, smoke alarms etc.' Also, zigbee is a low power, low data rate, low distance communication module. The first thing that strikes my mind is the RF transmitters/ receivers modules (available in readymade PCB types of variable carriers like 430MHz,330MHz etc). They are simple, low cost and easy to use as compared to zigbee. they would almost have same data rate. they can be easily used for the applications listed above. then why to use zigbee?

ZigBee has to be one of the most misunderstood protocols in use.

As I have pointed out a number of times on this forum. What ZigBee provides is a standard that lets your modules interact with modules from various vendors. Radio communication including the mesh network is provided by other underlying protocols that can be had without ZigBee.

Comparing RF transmitter/receiver pairs to zigbee is like comparing a piece of wire to USB.

@3v0
so u r telling that zigbee is a 'standard' which is a paper documentation in which RF modules can interact with each other not necessary that they are zigbee modules. is it like a 'way' for two devices to communicate?


@BrownOut
Would you please clarify more on your point.

That about sums it up.

ZigBee - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia