The real home networking driver

While the initial drive of home networks was heralded as a way to simply connect PCs to share a broadband connection in one household, it's now clear that the home network will be about advanced voice, video and data services. In fact, industry observers believe the real push behind the networked home will be networked entertainment services.

According to In-Stat/MDR, networked entertainment elements such as Wi-Fi routers and media servers that link TVs and stereos directly into the home network will propel the overall market to grow from $1.8 billion in 2002 to over $5.3 billion in 2007. And although media networking currently only makes up 6 percent of the home networking market, it will make up 49 percent of the total home networking revenue share by the end of 2007.

Such a future is seen by BellSouth, which currently offers a suite of standalone home networking services such as remote access and parental controls that are also integrated into its FastAccess DSL offerings delivered via existing wires or as wireless home networking offering (Wireless HomeNetworking Plus) via a 2Wire HomePortal intelligent gateway. "If home networking is going to reach the mainstream, it's got to be pushed out from the PCs to where customers normally use it, which is their TV or stereo. That's when you start to hit the mother lode," said Randy Kinkaid, BeliSouth's senior director of consumer Internet services.

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Fighting for that incremental subscriber dollar, cable and DSL players alike are working to promote their respective homenetworking initiatives. Their respective supporting forums (DSL Forum and CableLabs) have launched standard initiatives to drive the growth of home networking services.

Whereas the initial drive of the DSL Forum was to foster growth in terms of lines deployed, the DSL Forum's DSLHome initiative, jointly launched with SBC, Bell Canada, Verizon and BellSouth, will work with vendors and other industry groups to provide a standard architecture for home networking. The Forum is driving not only technical innovation and support to push interoperability among vendors, but also is providing market education.

With their respective PacketCable and DOCSIS 1.1 rollouts in full swing, major MSOs (Cox, Comcast and Time Warner) are also charging hard at the home networking opportunity. Their efforts are then being advanced via CableLabs' CableHome 1.0/1.1 standards. Achieving ITU standardization via the ITU J.191, CableHome 1.0 offers users a managed residential gateway to provide authentication/provisioning, remote management and firewall management. Close behind is CableHome 1.1, a specification that adds residential gateway security, standard QoS for home LANs as well as support for home servers.

The goal of CableHome is to keep the experience as painless as possible. "The most important aspect of this is to try to simplify the proposition for the consumer," says Ralph Brown, CableLabs' broadband access vice president and chief software architect. "And the intent is it's no muss, no fuss, plug it in and it works," he said.

COPYRIGHT 2003 Horizon House Publications, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group