Connected Homes: The Next Network Frontier

At the height of the go-go '90s, when the Internet was booming and telecom network operators were along for the ride, discussion of the networked home was common. Executives talked — with straight faces — about home appliances that were integrated onto a single network, enabling the refrigerator to alert the homeowner's cell phone when milk was needed.

When the bubble burst, so did talk of the networked refrigerator. But the idea of the networked home — or connected home as it is now often called — is again the rage. The new connected home push is driven in part by the need of broadband service providers to find new revenues that can bolster the triple- and quadruple-play bundles already commoditized by competition, as well as by the confusing complexity of consumer products that can be linked in the home, opening the opportunity for managed services that remove the complexity.

This time around, the driving forces are likely to be more practical concerns such as controlling energy use and costs, being more environmentally friendly, tying together digital media devices within the home, and offering such adjunct services as security and home health care.

The challenges are also of a practical nature. Problem No. 1 is making the technology easy for consumers to use without a lot of costly hands-on help, said Tushar Saxena, director of technology for Verizon, with a specialty in home networking. “This needs to get a lot easier,” Saxena said. “We need for consumers who aren't tech-aware to be able to understand this.”

The possible

There are a number of different initiatives to address ease of use, many of them coming from the consumer electronics manufacturers as well as from standards organizations such as the Digital Living Network Alliance. There are now multiple competing approaches to tying together devices and appliances in the home, including the Z-Wave Alliance, which backs a wireless in-home network technology based on an open standard developed by Zensys and now built into more than 225 products from 125 companies, including HVAC systems, lamps, thermostats, garage door openers, gateways, automatic window blinds and more. Two other in-home networking technologies are Zigbee, which recently was adopted by the HomePlug Powerline Alliance and a group of major power companies, and Echelon's LonWorks. These groups look at service providers as potentially strong partners.