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| EMagazine Volume 5 Issue 2 April / May 2000 |
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Toys Interview - April 2000 - [HTI Home Page] |
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Interview - Structured
Cabling Solutions The very nature of a Residential Gateway Appliance is that these services arrive via a common media and are then divided into distinct functions as the services make their way through the home. This "Gateway" component actually requires the presence of a structured cabling network to deliver these individual applications within the protocol necessary for common interface. |
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QUESTION 1: What do you recommend as a standard cabling package for a modern home? Please list the components of the system and their uses. (i.e. Distribution Panel, Number of cables and types, outlets etc.).
ANSWER 1: Every new home built in America has a circuit breaker box, complete with breakers. Attached to the circuit breakers there is wire running to rooms in the home. At the end of the wire there are outlets to plug appliances into. Similar to this electrical distribution system, Lucent Technologies believes that new homes should have a voice, video, and data distribution system. Lucent's HomeStar® Wiring System was developed to address this need. HomeStar is a structured wiring system consisting of a centrally located box or panel containing voice, video, and data connection points. Attached to these connection points are Cat5 wire for voice and data applications, and RG6 Coax cable for video applications. At the ends of the wire are outlets for appliances such as telephones, televisions, and computers to name a few.
We have not seen manufacturers driving recommendations so much as looking at where the systems are being installed.
The custom home market typically has much larger systems installed and lots of wire and outlets. These systems are typically designed for the homebuyer by a dealer / installer.
In the production home market, we have seen much smaller systems being looked at. Here we see builders looking at 2 to 3 telephone outlets and 2 to 3 video outlets. What we also see is the builder offering upgrade packages to homebuyers. The homebuyer is told what comes with the home, and then they have the opportunity to add more to a system very similar to how they can upgrade paint, carpeting, or other items in a new home.
What we would recommend is for homebuyers to think about the function of a particular room, now and in the future. Will the den be used as a home office? Will the bedroom ultimately house a child that one day will want a phone, TV, or Internet access in that room. The time to wire a house is before the walls go up.
QUESTION 2: Have the recommended cabling standards changed over the past year? Have more wire types been added / changed? Are there more applications now ... please elaborate?
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Interestingly, the FCC recently mandated Category 3 (CAT 3) as the minimum new standard for telephone wiring installed inside homes and other buildings. Some believe that the FCC will be unable to monitor and enforce the mandate, but others believe that builders will adopt the FCC mandate to avoid litigation down the road with homeowners who find out that their homes do not have "good wire".
From an application point of view, we see some interesting developments. The number of households with multiple PC's has exploded. There is more need to share data and resources between them. There are a lot more multiplayer network aware games than ever before. More and more households have high speed internet connections that can be shared between PC's. Pilot programs are underway to use these connections for voice and television in addition to the Internet. Digital and satellite TV have increased tremendously. A new application area is the idea of using the internet and LAN connections within a house for household appliances. This is a brand new area with the promise of having intelligent appliances. All of the following have been mentioned:
- Refrigerators that keep track of their contents
- Ovens that download recipes
- Washers and dryers that run when utility rates are lowest
- Appliances that place their own service calls when they are operating outside of their normal specs.
QUESTION 3: Is structured cabling a standard component in new home construction yet? If not ... how soon will it be considered so? How much does it add to the cost of the home? Is this cost more or less than it was a year ago?
ANSWER 3: No, structured wiring in not a standard component in new home construction. As you know, the US builder market is very fragmented. The largest builder accounts for approximately 25,000 homes out of the roughly 1,000,000 built each year. Each builder has a different idea about how and when to adopt structured wiring. Compounding the issue is the fact that many builders have multiple autonomous divisions that make independent decisions. We are seeing the growth of applications that are helping drive the need for structured cabling from the Internet to digital cable. We believe that the market is ready to see some serious penetration for structured cabling right now.
In the production end of the market, entry level systems can be installed that might add $1000 to the price of the home. High end custom homes can see systems in the thousands of dollars range. In many cases, "low voltage dealers" install these systems. Lots of individual companies that have lots of different business plans on how they operate. Thus you can see differences in how much it adds to the cost of a home.
I think that the cost is about the same. Manufacturers are constantly looking at reducing costs. There are also a lot of players in the supply chain. I'm not sure that the market has developed enough to drive the cost down yet.
QUESTION 4: How has the explosion of Home Networking and Broadband Internet Connections affected the design and cost of Structured cabling systems?
ANSWER 4: The explosion of Home Networking and Broadband Internet Connections has had very little effect on the DESIGN of residential wiring systems. The residential wiring market has had the advantage of seeing the development of commercial cabling systems over the last ten years of so. Therefore, residential cabling systems, such as HomeStar, have been designed to support and take full advantage of the LANs and other networking products that are available. What the recent explosion has affected greatly is the DEMAND for residential structured wiring systems. Homeowners, builders, developers, and realtors have become increasingly aware of the value that a structured wiring system adds to a new home and are requesting them in increasing numbers.
QUESTION 5: Is the use a fiber optic cabling something that the homeowner should consider in the structured wiring system? Why / Why not? How costly is it?
ANSWER 5: For customers who want to be on the leading edge, fiber may be added to a residential wiring system for a fairly modest additional cost. The modest cost is associated with the raw fiber. Once the fiber gets terminated with the electronics that convert the light back to electrical signals, the cost goes way up. The homebuyer has to be aware of this. From a technical perspective however, there are currently no applications that require fiber in the home today. In addition, it is by no means clear what type of fiber will be best if and when it is eventually needed - 62.5 micron multimode, 50 micron multimode, plastic, or singlemode. Fiber IN the home is most useful if there is fiber TO the home. While there are products available today that address the fiber-to-the-home market, there has been minimal national deployment to date.
QUESTION 6: How does your system integrate or interface with a Residential Gateway? What does the future hold and how will your system adapt to new technologies?
ANSWER 6: The Residential Gateway Concept, still in it's development stage, proposes to offer a multitude of services to homeowners via one service provider and a single transmission medium. Be it Broadband Cable or DSL Telephony, users will have to access bundled services covering applications from Video, Voice and Data to Home Control and Automation features from one source. The very nature of a Residential Gateway Appliance is that these services arrive via a common media and are then divided into distinct functions as the services make their way through the home. This "Gateway" component actually requires the presence of a structured cabling network to deliver these individual applications within the protocol necessary for common interface. By example, telephone dialtone can be delivered to a home via Broadband Cable services, yet will require a transformation within the gateway unit into a medium common to all telephone appliances (RJ11).
The HomeStar Wiring System is designed as an Open Architecture system allowing the complete integration of service provider offers. Adaptation to copper, fiber and hybrid copper/fiber media will assure homeowners of guaranteed performance for years to come.
Bell Laboratories, a division of Lucent Technologies, remains at the forefront of innovation and development for SONET Fiber networks for the Broadband Cable industry and continues it's developmental lead in DSL Technology for digital wireline services. It is within this dynamic and innovative environment that the HomeStar Wiring System continues to bring residential telecommunications solutions that offer the bandwidth and flexibility necessary for today's home.
QUESTION 7: Please describe what makes your system unique or superior to other cabling systems in the marketplace.
ANSWER 7: The HomeStar Structured Cabling System is the latest evolution of Lucent products that address our customers connectivity needs. Our SYSYTIMAX Structured Cabling System (which serves commercial enterprise customers) revolutionized the way cabling infrastructure is engineered in commercial applications and is the recognized as the industry leader. Backed by that experience and by the same Bell Labs engineers that developed those products and systems, HomeStar is now aiming at the fast growing residential marketplace. The home will soon need to be the communications gateway for residents to bring business, commerce, educational, and entertainment services into and out of the home. Therefore, the home will need the same high-speed and bandwidth capabilities that are standard in the commercial market. With products and systems engineered and tailored for the residential customer, HomeStar will move the networks intelligence and capabilities beyond the commercial building and into and through the home where people we be working, shopping, learning, and being entertained.
