Consumer electronics, broadband merging in mess

SAN FRANCISCO—While much of the talk at this week’s RHK Startrax 2004 conference here has centered on how carriers can add value to the broadband pipe, those focused on the residential customer premises equipment side of the market say a lot of work remains before telcos can have a cohesive offering.

In a discussion of the future digital home, panelists all sketched out visions of fully connected homes in which carriers would be a value-added player. But that’s where the agreement ended.

One point of opinion diversion revolves around what service will launch home networking into a mass market that encompasses more than multiple PCs sharing a broadband pipe. Stéphane Téral, managing director of RHK, said entertainment is likely the key driver, starting with digital photography.

"A lot of people have digital cameras now and that, we think, is where things start moving," he said.

Anthony Ambrose, generation manager of platform programs for Intel’s Communications Infrastructure Group, however, believes the push will come with more advanced devices such as Intel’s entertainment PC, an $800 box that runs Windows XP and looks like a large VCR and can record TV and store digital music and digital photo collections among other things.

Intel, which isn’t manufacturing the PC itself but licensing the design, also has committed a $200 million fund specifically to the digital home networking market. That fund came about in part because of the lack of interoperability between the myriad of home entertainment gadgets.

"One big question is how do you get all these devices to talk to each other," Ambrose said.

At an even more elementary level, there still is disagreement over the medium for inter-device communications within the home. While most agree that some form of Wi-Fi will dominate the market, it won’t be the only option and may not even be viable for some very high bandwidth applications.

"The use of raw wireless bandwidth to transport video around the home is really tough," said Ryan Koontz, director of marketing at AFC.