A new report reveals that computers, with well over 70 percent, and mobile phones, with close to 20 percent, are the devices most connected to the internet at home. There is, however, strong potential for new TV devices to become connected, such as TV set-top boxes, flat-screen TVs, DVD recorders and personal video recorders.
ConsumerLab researcher Michael Björn says: "There is a shift under way from TV networks to networked TV, so operators will need to make sure that IPTV services are optimized for both the computer and the networked TV."
Björn's report, The Networked Home, examines where devices are located in the home and what we are using to go online. It also looks at what devices consumers are likely to want in the future and what they may want connected to the internet. The report was based on a web survey of more than 5,000 people in the US, UK, France, Germany and Japan.
"We tend to picture the TV set in the living room and the computer in the home office or bedroom," Björn says. "But people are just as likely to watch TV in bed and use a computer in the living room."
The report also provides new insights into how mobile phones are used. Instead of turning them off when we come home, they have become the most common internet connection device after the computer. Yet interest in landline phones is rising, as it remains important to people to be able to call a "place." The report also shows that, as interest grows among consumers, the time is ripe for VoIP services to step out of the computer.
In the home, devices are most frequently used in the living room and the bedroom. A full 30 percent of the respondents believe that their access point is in the living room, there is increasing interest in having an additional access point in the bedroom. Close to 60 percent have ADSL, but interest in fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) is growing. Right now, cable LANs remains slightly more common than wireless LANs in the home.
"Activities are no longer governed by what room we are in, but by what we want to do at that moment," Björn says. The challenge for operators and service providers alike is to adapt technology and services to fit these changing household structures.
