User friendliness

No doubt user friendliness will be one of the critical issues that companies in the area of home networking and services will have to ensure in order to make the smart home happen on a large scale. Even as an engineer I am myself sometimes annoyed by the cumbersome programming of such common devices like videotape recorders.

The challenge of integration

The first step towards the smart home is to have technological devices or appliances at home, like a PC, a satellite dish or a decoding unit. The next important step is to make all those entities talk to each other in order to multiply the possibilities, facilitate the control and ease of use. Some standards are emerging but some work remains to be done. So far no integrated offers are made to the end-user.

This is all the more problematic as a private user usually considers the purchase of home technological devices as a real investment. Given the current market and service offering, there is a risk that some `on-line' homes may look like a jigsaw puzzle of pieces which are incompatible or at least not making use of all technological possibilities.

Market prospects

Some surveys show that reaching the market segments beyond the group of early adopters of technology will be difficult at least in the next couple of years.

The market size will depend on the services to be offered and their price. In the case of Switzerland the market size range is estimated between 5% to 50% of the residential homes according to the different possible scenarios.

Whereas in the United States it is estimated that by the end of 2005, U.S. households will have more than 80 million connection points for entertainment-specific applications (Parks Associates report).

We should also not forget that housing ownership is an important factor in the incentive to invest in home improvement. No global conclusion can be made today. However, it is already obvious that home networking deployment will be easier and quicker in some countries where the ground is already prepared like in the US or in Scandinavia.

The current situation should be an incentive to potential business players in the area of home networking. Network operators in particular start positioning themselves to provide integrated solutions and services to the users. Since home networks will often be installed by the end-user or by non-technical people, they need to be very easy to install or they will not be a market success. In view of the existing and legacy equipment it must be taken into account that most users are not willing to invest in new expensive equipment every year.

Service and network architecture

As a consequence, open and scalable platforms as well as automated configuration are necessary. Eurescom project P1206 on `Broadband Services in the Intelligent Wireless Home' has been working on those issues. In this project Telenor, Swisscom, Deutsche Telekom, France Telecom, and Elisa Communications have been performing collaborative research to get a clearer view of possible service and network architectures in the home area and to help network operators achieve a stronger position towards suppliers.

Connecting your house to the wide area networks means that administration functions are required for configuration, management, and maintenance. Security and reliability are expected by the users and are challenges that could be solved in particular by telecom operators.

Visions for the smart home

If the vision of the smart home becomes true, networks will not only make your house more intelligent inside, they will also allow you to solve your daily home routines remotely and to enjoy more personalised entertainment and targeted services from your favourite chair.

Users should not regard technology as a problem, also if they are no high-tech fans. Even today it is possible to enjoy life in a smart home.

If you are not fully convinced read about the Steiners enjoying their `Futurelife', or, even better, visit them in the quiet Swiss village of Hünenberg. There you will see how technology can improve the quality of life.

This issue of Eurescom mess@ge presents a selection of exclusive articles covering different aspects of the smart home. You will get some concrete visions for home networking from Eurescom project P1206, as well as a presentation of the `inHaus' testing and demonstration center in Duisburg/Germany, and finally an exciting report about the experiences of real inhabitants of the `Futurelife' house in Switzerland.