A method, apparatus, and computer program product provide applications and application developers with generic access from user mode to the L2CAP layer of Bluetooth by exposing the L2CAP layer to user mode via a socket interface. In particular, a kernel mode primary component and user mode helper component cooperate to expose a Winsock interface to user mode components, and to manage various Bluetooth-specific functions and operations, allowing a user mode user application to access Bluetooth functionality without providing Bluetooth-specific commands or actions, and without being required to use RFCOMM.