But divergent developments in the underlying technologies have delayed this union between analog and digital data, voice, and video technologies. In the United States, infrastructure deregulation has split network service providers along technology lines. As the networking infrastructure and services continue to evolve, consumers can expect anything but easy sailing on this next wave of home communications.
Today there are no standards for various home devices to communicate together.
So you'll see a lot of really neat technology appear, but the challenge for consumers is how to get it all to work together. News Radio Fusion audio primers Computerworld Minute Dataquest reports that more than 15 million U.S. homes already have multiple PCs. And Jupiter Communications projects that in addition to PCs, consumers will purchase more than 15 million non-PC information appliances for the home throughout the next five years. Bitten by the Internet bug, users are driving the convergence, leaving their doors wide open for enhanced network services. Alliances such as technology consortiums and standards groups are forming left and right, with many major players putting their eggs in more than one basket.