 | Issue: | North America I 2014 |
| Article no.: | 3 | |
| Topic: | Enabling the smarthome: Networks in the Zettabyte Era | |
| Author: | Todd D. Antes | |
| Title: | VP, Product Management | |
| Organisation: | Qualcomm Inc. | |
| PDF size: | 277KB |
About author
Todd D. Antes is Vice President of Product Management, Wired/Wireless Infrastructure Networking Business Unit in Qualcomm Atheros. Todd Antes joined Qualcomm in 2011, following the acquisition of Atheros. He has extensive experience and has held several senior management roles in the wireless semiconductor and cellular industries. Prior to joining Qualcomm, Mr Antes held various senior marketing and product management roles at Philips Semiconductor, including Director of Marketing for the company’s Wireless LAN, Bluetooth, ultra-wideband, and cellular chipset businesses. He was also a member of the founding executive team of AirPrime, a 3G/cellular data products company acquired by Sierra Wireless in 2003.
Mr Antes holds Bachelor of Science in electrical engineering and Master of Business Administration degrees from Santa Clara University.
Article abstract
Contributing to the zettabyte era will be billions of communicating Internet-of-Things devices, such as home appliances, home security, home health etc. The smarthome can change our lives. However, to enable efficient interaction between devices, they all must have a common platform and a common communication language. The breaking of the walled garden and the spread of web technologies have accelerated the creation of innovative mobile applications. Similarly, compatibility of devices with an open smarthome platform and a standard language (AllJoyn[TM]) will allow for the development of even more convenient and collaborative services, and allow for a community of developers to flourish.
Full Article
Many people in the developed world already pay for some combination of the so-called ‘triple play’ of services – video, voice and data – to their home. Broadband service providers have invested billions of dollars into networking infrastructure to deliver these services. The same service providers are now investing more money into delivering even more value-add applications and services to consumers as part of an emerging smarthome environment. In addition, new over-the-top service providers can leverage the same broadband IP pipe to deliver applications like home security, energy management, health care, etc.
What would make a consumer willing to pay more? For some, it would be feeling more secure. For others, it would be saving time and hassle by enabling them to be virtually in two places at one time or it would be the satisfaction of saving money or reducing energy to protect the environment.
Imagine being able to set up your home to turn on your lights when you’re away. The same system automatically sends you a text message every day when your son and daughter come in the door from school. It also records a video of the person who broke into your car in the driveway which you can give to the police. While you’re on vacation, it lets you know that a pipe has burst so you can have it repaired before you return, to minimize the damage.
Of course, much of this is possible today – using a number of different devices. In the U.S. alone, there were roughly seven connected devices per household in 2012. That number is expected to increase to approximately 22 per household by 2020 .
Everything around us is becoming intelligent and increasingly connected, forever changing the way we interact with the world. The opportunity before us is to deliver connected devices that can collaborate to solve real-life problems, and robust networks to support them – all while hiding the complexity of the underlying technology.
The future is multi-zettabyte networks
A recently published study by a major network equipment vendor claims that worldwide cloud traffic – 1.2 zettabytes in 2012, will grow to 5.3 zettabytes by 2017. Global data centre traffic during the same period will reach the astounding total of 7.7 zettabytes by 2017. One zettabyte = 10007bytes = 1000exabytes = 1 billion terabytes. That is huge. It is the equivalent of 100 trillion hours of music (for context, there are 114,077,116.131 years, roughly, in just one trillion hours). A single zettabyte is enormous, but broadband service providers are already working to build, connect, and manage multi-zettabyte networks. It’s critical that they build these networks to support new applications and services that they are delivering as part of an emerging smarthome environment. Service providers are preparing their networks for the zettabyte era.
Home is where you are
As new applications and services come online, there are three main areas we need to collectively focus attention to enable and optimize the smarthome in the zettabyte era. First, we need to redefine the boundaries of ‘home’. Home is no longer a building at an address. Instead, it’s where the user is. It is always at his side. Even today, a person spends their day in the connected world, either at home, work or on-the-go. They are connected via a platform that spans three networks: public, private and proximal.
Second, we need to seamlessly and securely connect new applications and services. We need to create a horizontal platform that not only coordinates activities of devices and people, but also acts as a conduit to new resources and services that enhance user experiences or improve operation of the connected home.
Third, we need to build a highly collaborative ecosystem to develop those applications and services, APIs, and infrastructure needed to turn homes into smarthomes. Only then can we unlock the potential of the smarthome.
Breaking down walls, building a community
What stands between us and this opportunity is the fragmentation of the ecosystem. We need to break down the walls and develop a burgeoning ecosystem of developers who work from a common framework to deliver applications for the smarthome. The connected home is a point of convergence for multiple verticals, each having their own interests and legacy technologies.
How can we get the garage door opener, doorbell, home audio, HVAC, mobile phone and other systems on the same network? Wi-Fi®, Bluetooth® or Powerline can be the physical link, but those systems are speaking different languages. We need a common language like the AllJoyn[TM] software framework hosted by the AllSeen Alliance, which allows a variety of devices to discover, connect and communicate directly with other products enabled by AllJoyn. AllJoyn and its service frameworks enable interoperability across Operating Systems, platforms and products – from any brand.
The AllSeen Alliance, a cross-industry consortium, was formed in December 2013 by a group of companies – Haier, LG Electronics, Panasonic, Qualcomm, Sharp, Silicon Image, TP-LINK and more – that is dedicated to driving widespread adoption of products, systems and services to accelerate Internet of Everything. Through this alliance, these organizations will work to enable interoperability across multiple devices, systems and services and support the broadest cross-industry effort to accelerate Internet of Everything.
The connected home is bigger than the sum of its parts. If we collaborate intelligently, allowing each of us to focus on what we do best, everyone will benefit.
Connecting the smarthome
While many homes already have broadband access, service providers are continuing to look for new ways to take better advantage of public, private and proximal clouds to deliver more personal and intuitive experiences to their users.
The public cloud offers vast resources that the connected home can tap into. It delivers resources for communication, and enables value-added services such as monitored security, cloud storage, entertainment, energy management and many more that transform the home experience. The issues then become: connecting private and public clouds; making sure data is shared, but shared securely; and exposing the capabilities of both clouds to applications. For that, we need a smart gateway. A smart gateway is an always-on device that sits in the home and bridges private and public clouds by leveraging the consumer broadband Internet connection. The smart gateway is a connectivity engine that helps manage bandwidth to optimize the user experience. From the gateway, you can see and touch potentially all of the devices or things in your home.
A new class of home networking platform
The mobile phone world already dealt with fragmentation. Walled gardens – with proprietary technologies, proprietary APIs, incompatible architectures – are gone. Now smartphones offer a platform for innovation. The smarthome is next. When applying the same performance, power, networking, and mobile technology leadership that are used to enable the smartphone as a platform, we are enabling the smarthome as a platform. We are building solutions that enable horizontal connected home platforms across networks and across devices.
One of the first challenges is to transform home networking equipment into something that provides more than a shared broadband connection – into a platform to accommodate the influx of connected devices and services. This can be achieved by creating a new class of Internet processors that provide the control point from which the Internet (IP-based) applications are served up from the cloud. In doing so, these Internet processors prepare the home network for the next generation of Internet content, applications, and services.
A horizontal platform like this is critical for traditional and new zettabyte-era service providers, who are already looking at how they can increase average revenue per user (ARPU), reduce subscriber churn, increase loyalty, and enhance their brand by adding more customer value. Service providers have been working hard to evaluate which products and services will open subscribers’ wallets. Does it make good business sense for the service provider to add things like home security, energy management systems, healthcare and fitness to the “triple play” they already offer? Can a home appliance manufacturer offer convenience and support services via the home network in order to differentiate their products?
Finally, as more services are delivered through the gateway and distributed over more powerful Wi-Fi technologies like 802.11ac, there is another factor that is becoming important to consumers and service providers – power usage. While the per-household cost of a gateway is not exorbitant, many are looking to reduce energy costs and environmental impact. Service providers are also keen to minimize the power consumption of their gateways, in response to many regional and international regulations calling for lower energy usage.
Smarthomes and multi-zettabyte networks are close
The reality is that the industry is already building point technologies and products that allow companies to build, control, fill and pay for multi-zettabyte networks. It’s up to us to collectively build an ecosystem to ensure everything will seamlessly and securely work together. The opportunity is tremendous, as these new networks will open still more opportunity. They will enable a new line of in-home applications and services that enhance our daily lives. With these networks, service providers will be able to find new ways to reach in and expand their footprint in users’ homes and lives.
Networks for the Zettabyte era will be here before you know it.
