For any new technology to be adopted by a mass market, it must serve a mass-market need. Home networking is no exception. Early adopters have embraced this technology for its ability to connect their PCs, to share an Internet connection, files and printers, and to engage in multi-player gaming. And with more than 8 million broadband users and 20 million multi-PC households in the U.S. alone, home networking is certainly poised to be a widely used technology. However, for home networking to truly move into the mainstream, the focus must be away from the technology itself and instead on the applications that affect people in their daily lives. These applications are arriving on the market now, and by the end of this year, music and entertainment will drive the increased adoption of home-networking technology.

Nearly a century has passed since recorded music has been available on portable media, and in that time, consumers have grown accustomed to having a physical entertainment collection. While there have been important evolutionary steps in the quality and convenience of recorded media (CDs have replaced LPs, DVDs are now supplanting VHS tapes), until recently, what hadn't changed was the necessity of physical media for distributing on-demand music and video. Then peer-to-peer file sharing changed everything. With the explosion of Napster, millions of people for the first time understood the power of digitally distributed media first hand. And its advantages are compelling; it's available nearly instantly, takes up no space other than space on a hard drive, and because it is digital, it can be sorted and categorized in myriad ways. It is in no uncertain terms revolutionary.

However, revolutions never occur without friction, and with all of these benefits come an equal number of issues. The recording industry is not willing to be cut out of the equation for distributing music in this way and has been successful in suspending services like Napster until a business model that makes sense is established. Moreover, the quality of these digital files, when distributed over a peer-to-peer network, can be inconsistent due to the fact that users themselves encode their CDs into MP3 format at different sampling rates. Still, the appetite for digital music and entertainment is stronger than ever, and most experts believe that these issues will be sorted out and that this new means of media distribution is here to stay. The key to making all of this a mainstream reality, however, will be unlocking all this content from the confines of the PC.

SimpleDevices was founded on the notion that the PC, and soon the set-top box and dedicated storage gateway, have tremendous capabilities as interface and mass storage devices, but fall short when it comes to "lean back" entertainment experiences. If you've ever been stuck in the den listening to your MP3 collection over your tinny computer speakers wishing you could hear them in your living room through your high-quality stereo speakers, then you know what I'm talking about. Our SimpleFi™ product, developed in conjunction with Motorola and available to consumers in September, bridges that gap between your PC and stereo, providing fully interactive access to your digital music collection where you want to experience it. Take that notion one step further with SimpleAuto™, and wirelessly access your entire digital media collection in your car without having to burn a CD or use "sneaker net" by walking a removable hard drive to and from your car for synchronizing your audio files. Add to it time-shifting of preference-based content. With our SimpleClock™, you can wake up to your favorite radio show, followed by customized financial news and the weekend movie reviews and local showtimes, all available at your bedside at exactly the time you want it.

These products, centered around a home network and SimpleServe™ content management software, are the types of applications that will take home networking into the mainstream. The consumer won't necessarily care or even know that home networking enables all of this to happen - they just want their content where and when they want it. And once this home network is installed, the foundation has been laid to support other applications such as video and voice as they become available. Just as the holy grail of delivering broadband has been "the last mile" to the home, "the next 200 feet" within the home environment is where home networking will enable the valuable applications that broadband infrastructure supports.

Unlocking digital media from the PC is one thing; making it easy and robust is another. We took a top-down approach in selecting the appropriate networking technology for the applications mentioned above and decided that wireless was preferable to other wired technologies due to ease of installation and its inherent support of portable products such as SimpleAuto. We then looked at the various wireless networking technologies available against the following requirements:

• Fully functional, TCP/IP network to support interactivity in the form of searching and tagging of content at the device as well as aggregating user preferences
• Ease of installation -it couldn't require users to open up their PC
• Resistance to interference with other legacy electronics common in the home environment, such as microwave ovens and 2.4GHz cordless phones.
• Compatible with next-generation networking products that support higher data rates and open the door to new applications

At the end of the analysis, HomeRF was the clear choice. The current HomeRF 1.0 products support the distribution of digital audio, and with the backward-compatible HomeRF 2.0 due out later this year with data rates increased to 10MBPS and support for voice, these technologies provide a clear roadmap for new applications in our product pipeline.

But what's important to remember in all of this is that asking the average consumer to make this same analysis is an exercise in futility and will inevitably paralyze her into inaction. It's also unnecessary. What consumers really care about is listening to their digital music collection in the living room or their automobile with a minimum of hassle. That is why when you see a Motorola SimpleFi on store shelves, "home networking" or even "HomeRF" won't be prominently mentioned, just as you wouldn't expect to see "electricity-powered" on that new television you just purchased. This doesn't diminish the critical role that home networking technology plays in these products, it just means that it will be transparent to the user as any good technology should be.

Mike Maser is vice president of marketing for SimpleDevices, Inc. He has over seven years of experience in high-tech marketing with companies such as Intel Corporation and NextOffice. Mike is an active participant in the HomeRF Working Group Marketing Committee.