Mark Newman is Chief Research Officer at Informa Telecoms & Media leading global research teams and activities from the company's London office. In this role Newman is responsible for Informa Telecoms and Media's thought leadership in the converging mobile, broadband and entertainment sectors. In his receiver contribution he wonders at how we, for all the excitement about mobilizing entertainment and communications services, still spend most of our time at home; and whereas a mobile or laptop is all we are likely to take with us when we leave home, our homes themselves are crammed full of communications and entertainment devices. Get to know his connected strategies for connecting homes.

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Informa Telecoms & Media

Artwork for this article by Lisa Chan

A friend of mine has taken to texting his eldest son when he wants to ask him a question. Nothing strange about that, you may think. Except that he does it even when he knows that his son is in another room in the same house.

The reason that he texts his son is simple. It's because he knows that he'll get a proper reply. Teenagers were never that communicative even when I was one. But since the onset of the digital communications era, text, instant messaging and email have become preferred means of interaction. They depersonalize communication and take away embarrassment, awkwardness and the undertones and overtones that come with eye-to-eye spoken communication.

My friend (and his eldest son) might be an extreme example of how people are now using electronic communications in their homes. But they do serve to illustrate a growing desire for people to remain connected in their homes.

There was a time not so long ago when the telephone was the only interactive device in the home. TV and radios are connected but they only provide one-way communication. And talk was never cheap. A 30-minute off-peak call to someone a few kilometers away was one thing. But making a long-distance call to someone the other side of the world was a treat reserved for Christmas or birthdays and with one eye always on the clock.

Attitudes began to change in the mid-1990s with the arrival of the internet, the mobile phone and the liberalization of telecommunications markets. The internet did away with the distinction between local and long-distance communications. The mobile phone brought us personal communications. And liberalization brought down the price of making a phone call.

But it is the internet - and more specifically, the broadband internet - that is changing the outlook for communications and entertainment markets.

In the developed world one out of every two homes now has a broadband connection. Many are now installing wireless routers to connect remote laptops (and PCs) via Wi-Fi. Internet telephony (VOIP) is becoming a mass-market service and many internet service providers are now offering pay-TV services (IPTV) that send pictures over the same broadband pipe.

Mobility is the other trend - along with the internet - that is shaping communications markets. And mobile operators are also offering new services such as television and mobile internet.

So, how will mobile and broadband internet services come together (or not) in the home?

It used to be easy. There was a time when every device had its own network and every network had its own device. TV sets connected to terrestrial or satellite-based television networks. Telephones hooked up to telephone lines and mobile phones rode on the airwaves.

But broadband and IP has changed all that. It holds the key to the future of television - the multiple TV set, high-definition, interactive TV home of the future. It provides low-cost voice telephony. And by extending the broadband pipe via Wi-Fi it has the potential to deliver services in and around the home or office to the mobile phone. Here we have one technology that can do four different things - fixed telephone service, mobile telephone service, the internet and television. Or quad-play as it has become known.

No surprise then that fixed and mobile operators and TV platforms are slugging it out to sign up broadband customers. And prices are in freefall. If you're prepared to take your broadband from the same company that provides you with your pay-TV or mobile service then there's a fair chance that you'll get broadband for free.

For the service provider, bundling all these services together is just the first phase of a long-term strategy aimed at tying together household's entire communications and entertainment needs in a single home network. But figuring out how to tie them together in a home network - and how to outmanoeuvre consumer electronics and software firms - is no easy task.

To control the home you need wired and wireless connections. But the intelligence to make TV sets, PC, computers and other accessories talk to each other and to the network is the harder part of the equation. The humble set-top box could hold the key. Service providers are figuring out ways to get set-top boxes to talk to the wireless routers that distribute Wi-Fi across the home. They can then hook up people's mobile phones to receive the same content and services they get on their PC or TV set. Some phones already have Wi-Fi. But there's still a lot of work to do to improve battery life and - most importantly - to design the functionality and user interfaces to make home networked services viable.

Microsoft has done a lot of thinking about the connected home. And it reckons it's in a strong position to challenge the service providers. The Xbox is just a games console to the tens of millions of gamers across the world. But it has the capability to become one of the building blocks of the connected home. And in the mobile space Microsoft is vying with Symbian - a company set up and jointly owned by many of the leading mobile phone manufacturers - to be the dominant operating system for smart phones. People tend to forget that there are a lot more people receiving and sending email on their Microsoft Windows phones than there are Blackberry users.

Consumer electronics companies are already bringing out products that link consumer electronics separates into a single hub. They too want a seat at the table in the connected home. Dutch electronics giant Philips is promoting a Connected Living concept that adds kitchen appliances and home security to entertainment and communications products. Apple is moving into TV and mobile phones.

So, no shortage of companies developing strategies for the connected home. But quite how the different strategies and service concepts fit together is a different matter entirely.

Do consumers actually want a connected home? I'm not sure that many of us even understand the concept. But what we do want is the freedom to time-shift and place-shift the services we already have. We want to be able to take the services we use at work into our homes. And the services we receive at home into the office or away with us on business or on holiday. It's pretty easy for any consumer to get their head around the concept of being able to access their pay-TV service on their mobile or PC wherever they happen to be. Or of being able to take their email or IM service with them whenever they leave the home or office.