Thursday, April 14, 2005
Getting Connected - the Smart Home
Connecting up a smart home? You mean high bandwidth in-home networking of all our hi-tech gear? Even here in NE PA where, like many rural parts of the country, we lack adequate access to high bandwidth communications for internet as well as mobile services? Yes! Because sometimes the solution to a tough problem is to come at it from a different direction by solving a seperate easier problem using a technique that applies to the original problem. That can create the conditions ( the popular or political pressure) to permit solution of the original problem.
Today, many of us in rural America have to rely on slow dial-up connections, or seek expensive high speed satellite service, because cable and telephone companies find it uneconomic to extend to us. Besides fixed wireless services which look very promissing, there is a another possibility for high bandwidth to every rural resident - and that is over the power company lines. We all get electric service over those wires and poles to our farms and homes ; and there is technology to allow those same wires to transmit very high bandwidth data - for internet and other services.
That could be a very attractive alternative if the power companies can overcome government regulations and deploy the technology. We don't hear much about that option, but there may be a way to bring it into the public forum and get people excited about what it could do for them.
There is some new attention going to the use of similar technology to move lots of data between gadgets and locations within the house using the electric wiring as an everywhere inexpensive network. The potential bandwidth is very high, over 150Mbits per second compared with 11 -50Mbits per second for most WiFi nets. There are several ways to create a future in-house network, e.g. ethernets or coax cables , wireless nets, the electric wire nets, or combinations. But why?
A good discussion of the whys and hows is provided by Eric Taub in his NYTimes article Everything's Connected, Yes. But How? As he puts it:
"Consumer technology seers say they think they have a good idea about the home of the future. It will be a place where photos, television shows, movies and music will be stored centrally and available in any room on demand.
It is called the connected home, where television sets, digital video recorders, DVD and music players and computers are all tied together. But an important question must be answered before the connected home becomes a reality: how will everything actually be connected?"
It's worth reading to get a feeling for the options and how real they may be. There are several technology approaches and standards that the engineers can argue about. But I think the issue is summed up best in one sentence by Panasonic North America's chief technology officer; it's a qoute that expresses perfectly the business thinking that is making today's consumer electronics ubiquitous :
"There will be a place for all of this stuff," said Mr. Liao of Panasonic. "You won't need it all, but it will become cheap enough to get it all."
Indeed ! And maybe even some spillover into cheap high bandwidth communications for rural America from the power line grid.
Today, many of us in rural America have to rely on slow dial-up connections, or seek expensive high speed satellite service, because cable and telephone companies find it uneconomic to extend to us. Besides fixed wireless services which look very promissing, there is a another possibility for high bandwidth to every rural resident - and that is over the power company lines. We all get electric service over those wires and poles to our farms and homes ; and there is technology to allow those same wires to transmit very high bandwidth data - for internet and other services.
That could be a very attractive alternative if the power companies can overcome government regulations and deploy the technology. We don't hear much about that option, but there may be a way to bring it into the public forum and get people excited about what it could do for them.
There is some new attention going to the use of similar technology to move lots of data between gadgets and locations within the house using the electric wiring as an everywhere inexpensive network. The potential bandwidth is very high, over 150Mbits per second compared with 11 -50Mbits per second for most WiFi nets. There are several ways to create a future in-house network, e.g. ethernets or coax cables , wireless nets, the electric wire nets, or combinations. But why?
A good discussion of the whys and hows is provided by Eric Taub in his NYTimes article Everything's Connected, Yes. But How? As he puts it:
"Consumer technology seers say they think they have a good idea about the home of the future. It will be a place where photos, television shows, movies and music will be stored centrally and available in any room on demand.
It is called the connected home, where television sets, digital video recorders, DVD and music players and computers are all tied together. But an important question must be answered before the connected home becomes a reality: how will everything actually be connected?"
It's worth reading to get a feeling for the options and how real they may be. There are several technology approaches and standards that the engineers can argue about. But I think the issue is summed up best in one sentence by Panasonic North America's chief technology officer; it's a qoute that expresses perfectly the business thinking that is making today's consumer electronics ubiquitous :
"There will be a place for all of this stuff," said Mr. Liao of Panasonic. "You won't need it all, but it will become cheap enough to get it all."
Indeed ! And maybe even some spillover into cheap high bandwidth communications for rural America from the power line grid.
