Home Networking Puzzle: Who's Going to Connect It?

Matt Stump

Start with an interactive set-top box in the living room running a host of TV and Web-based applications. Add an information appliance terminal in the kitchen, so mom can pay bills, help kids with Internet-related homework and search for recipes while she's cooking dinner.

Add in a computer screen on the fridge, where grocery lists are started, then automatically transmitted to the nearest store for next day delivery. And don't forget the PC enabled car, with computer mapping for vacation trips and screens in seatbacks so the kids have something to do on long vacation trips.

That's the nirvana of the "smart" house and "smart" car, as sketched out by panelists last week at a Kagan Seminars Inc. conference focusing on the home of the future.

But just as there are many applications being pondered, there are just as many questions. What is the business model for these services? What is the killer application? And, perhaps the most critical of all, who will be responsible for making the home network actually work.

"Over the next five years, too much technology and too many technologies from too many sources will be coming to the market, all converging on the consumer," said Gene Rosendale, senior director, global marketing sales/cable access at 3Com Corp. "And my concern is that the ultimate impedance is the consumer is just not going to be able to figure it out."

It's a classic dilemma for service providers and content players. Telephone and cable companies already have direct relationships with consumers. A Gateway, a Microsoft, even an Intel has a direct relationships with the consumers.

But these industries will cross over each other's boundaries in the future, Rosendale said, as they race to provide service to homes. "So many people will be in there to disrupt the relationship," he said.

There are huge problems facing companies who might want to manage a private network in the home, Rosendale said, ranging from the quality of in-home wiring, to drilling holes in walls to perhaps installing a server in the basement to messing with consumer's own consumer electronic equipment. If a modem installation takes two technicians two hours today, imagine what it will take to wire an integrated home, panelists said.

Rosendale said, someone has to do it. "Can you afford to lose a customer? We will have to have a service model."

There are elements to the puzzle that will improve in time, panelists said. User interfaces will become better, and lower computer networking costs will make services more feasible.