Electro/Telecom Industry Trends
May 2003
Home networking gains ground: Consumers starting to notice; CE companies planning ahead
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In the past, home networking has been a sneeze that tickled but didn’t happen, a rising star that wouldn’t ascend beyond the horizon. Even though magazines, the tech savvy, and Consumer Electronics (CE) company staffers have been talking about home networking for years, it has never gained widespread popularity. But that may soon change.
According to the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA), 42 percent of new homes are now being built with structured wiring. “The good news is builders are starting to pre-wire homes with category 5 or 5e wire for home-networking,” says Bill Rose, president of WJR Consulting and chair of the R7 Home Networking Committee, CEA’s team of industry professionals dedicated to creating the standards that will make home networking an easy household upgrade. “The bad news is that there are only about 1.2 million homes built each year, so with 110 million homes out there, it will take a while before home networking infrastructures are in place.”
“It’s a gradual evolution,” adds Virginia Williams, director of Engineering for CEA. “Internet is here to stay, people have home computers and multimedia devices like TVs and MP3 players, and now people are starting to see the need to connect all those devices together.”
Internet usage appears to be the main driver for home networking. Dallas-based Parks Associates, a research firm, has found that two-thirds of households with home networks chose to get linked because multiple PCs in the house are sharing the Internet connection.
Another step of progress for home networking has recently come in the form of a memorandum of understanding (MOU) hashed out between consumer electronics (CE) companies and cable multiple system operators (MSOs). The two groups chose IEEE 1394 (also called Firewire™) as the data transfer protocol of choice for entertainment network connections. That means High Definition TV set-top boxes will all be 1394 enabled, as will other devices manufactured by the CE companies. Through the MOU, these industry players have asked the Federal Communications Commission to make such requirements law. But there are still hurdles to overcome before home networking really takes off.
Easy does it
One of the biggest impediments to home networking progress will be an engineering challenge. “For home networking to really take off, you’ll need to have devices available in the retail market … things you can find at Best Buy or Wal-Mart,” says Rose. “But those stores won’t sell a product unless it’s easy to intstall use. Consumers aren’t network gurus. Their mindset is that if you buy a TV, you turn it on and it works. If you buy a VCR, the same thing should be true. It may flash “12:00” forever, but at least you can watch a video.”
Rose warns that standards will be key in making sure home networking devices are ready to connect. “People don’t buy everything from one company,” he says. “They buy from many CE companies, so we’ll need standards to ensure those devices work together well.”
He adds that the standards being written today will need to carry the CE industry well into tomorrow. “In the PC industry, people put up with pain because they’re used to system crashes and upgrading equipment. But when you buy a TV, you have the product for years. The standards we create will need to be around for years, too. We’ve got to get it right the first time out,” he notes.
That’s why CEA’s R7 committee has been working on several networking standards slated to come out by the end of this year. Watch for new standards addressing universal plug and play (UPnP) device specifications, Quality of Service (QoS) issues for Ethernet and AV network architecture, as well as for connecting Ethernet and 1394 networks to each other in the near future.