Top Tech Firms Plan Home Appliances Link
"standards have names like Bluetooth, CEBus, CAL, HAVi, HomePNA, HomePnP, HomeRF, Jini, LonWorks and VESA. The OSG would establish a common framework for these emerging standards for home networks, not supplant them."
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NEW YORK (Reuters) - A global alliance of 13 major computer, phone and electric utility companies Monday will unveil plans to forge a common software method for linking consumer and small business appliances to the Internet.
The group is designing a way to connect wired and wireless devices alike -- computers, telephones, appliances like TVs, stereos and VCRs, along with security alarms and electric meters, and even refrigerators or toasters -- to the Internet.
The alliance said in a statement that it aims to secure ways for Internet-based service businesses to deliver home services like security, energy management, emergency healthcare and electronic commerce.
Founding members of the alliance include telecommunications equipment suppliers like Alcatel, Cable & Wireless Plc, Ericsson, Lucent Technologies Inc. Motorola Inc. and Nortel Networks Ltd.
Computer companies taking part include IBM, Oracle Corp. and its Network Computer Inc. affiliate, Philips Electronics NV, Sun Microsystems Inc. and Sybase Inc. Also signing on is U.S. energy giant Enron Corp.'s Communications unit.
Mark Bregman, general manager of IBM's Pervasive Computing Group and the official charged with representing the world's largest computer maker in the alliance, said the new standard will offer a single gateway to a vast array of appliances.
''The problem in the household environment is that there are more standards than you can imagine with some of them international and some not,'' Bregman said in an interview.
''It would be a lot easier if I could go in through just one portal and access all those devices,'' he said.
The new software standard will be known as the Open Service Gateway (OSG) -- a mouthful of jargon -- but one the group hopes will overcome the crippling incompatibility of electronics equipment manufactured by different industries.
The OSG would offer various levels of security and privacy protection, allowing home and small-business owners to dictate when outside service providers would be allowed temporary and selective access to install, maintain or repair equipment.
The group will incorporate existing and emerging standards that say how electronic devices should communicate with other devices that have a mishmash of code names and acronyms which are obscure enough to make even a computer geek's head spin.
Such standards have names like Bluetooth, CEBus, CAL, HAVi, HomePNA, HomePnP, HomeRF, Jini, LonWorks and VESA. The OSG would establish a common framework for these emerging standards for home networks, not supplant them.
The Open Service Gateway will be based entirely on Java, a programming system that allows software developers to create new applications that can run on any kind of computer-controlled system, its backers said in a statement.
The standard will cover the delivery, installation, and management and repair of new software to control these appliances -- opening vast new markets for Internet service and software developers.
As Internet delivery is made easier for services like home alarm, medical alert, food service delivery, intercom, telephone services and others, demand among home and small-office customers is expected to boom.
Eventually, other telephone and cable service providers and energy management and computer technology companies are expected to join the group, Bregman said.
Missing from the list is Microsoft Corp., which has been focused on making its own Windows operating system as a standard for connecting a similar array of consumer electronics.
The initial working group plans to publish an initial version of the OSG specification by the middle of 1999.
By the end of the third quarter of this year, a number of products based on the standard are expected to be on the market, including a home network system from IBM that connects multiple PCs in a household, Bregman said.
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