September 29, 2005
Broadband – no wiring needed
This is technology that has been around for a while, but it seems that it is really starting to come to maturity.
Chip Helps Electric Outlet Go Broadband
The common electric socket will serve as your home’s connection to broadband with a new chip developed by Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. — doing away with all the Ethernet cables or the hassle of hooking up to a wireless network device.
Products are still being developed, but gadgets embedded with the chip from the Japanese manufacturer of Panasonic products can hook up to a broadband network by plugging into the common electrical outlet, company officials said Thursday.
That’s because the Osaka-based company has come up with technology to use electric wiring in the home to relay not just electricity but also data.
The technology has been around for some time — including in the United States — but Matsushita’s system is unique in that it delivers fast-speed broadband information at up to 170 megabits per second, which is faster than Ethernet.
The advantage is that the lowly electric socket is everywhere. Right now, a broadband outlet still isn’t usually available in every room, even in homes that have broadband connections.
The buzzword in the technology world over the last few years has been ubiquitous computing. It is the idea that in the future, everything will contain a computer. You want to run the dishwasher while you’re at work? Log in and tell it to start. Your friend is coming into town and staying at your house, and you want to change the air conditioning temperature to make the place comfortable before he arrives? Log in and set it an hour before he arrives. You’re about to leave work, and you want the oven to preheat to 400 degrees? Set it remotely. You’re on a business, and realized you want your TiVo to record something that you forgot to set? Set it up from 1000 miles away.
But for all this, there have been two things holding this back. The first is high-speed internet connectivity. Much of the nation 5 years ago was still using dial-up. This is quickly changing, and all but the luddites (like my parents) have high speed connections. The second was a matter of wiring. I just bought a 20-year-old house, and it’s not even approaching being wired for a network. I have set up a wireless network for my own computing use, but I’m not about to buy wireless adapters for my oven, refrigerator, etc etc.
But every house is wired for electricity. Plug something into a wall socket where you get your high-speed internet, and it can route signals all through the house for appliances. This is the step that needed to be completed for ubiquitous computing to become a reality.
The world, it’s a’changin’.
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