Intellect, a trade body for the UK technology industry, has today released a new report that predicts how homes could be transformed into hi-tech hubs with communication networks built into them, delivering everything from advanced entertainment services to health care, by the end of 2020. But you'll need a capable broadband ISP connection to do it.

The Connected Homes report suggests that the market could be worth £3bn a year in just five years time (2016). Sadly there's a catch, to make the most of this evolution you'd need broadband internet speeds of at least 6Mbps (Megabits per second).

According to the communications regulator, Ofcom UK, most but not all of us can already get something similar. The regulator revealed in July 2011 (here) that the country's national average broadband ISP download speed was 6.8Mbps (up by 10% on 6 months earlier).


The report states that homes with multiple TVs or PCs will also need "proportionately more bandwidth", while Healthcare services may require low bandwidth but high levels of reliability and availability.

The UK government has at least committed to help improve the situation by ensuring that 90% of people can get superfast broadband speeds (24Mbps+) by 2015, although the last 10% still face a minimum commitment of at least 2Mbps; well below Intellect's recommendation of 6Mbps.

The report notes that just over half of the UK's 26.2 million homes currently have a wireless router providing a basic Wi-Fi network. A further 20% have a wired Internet connection but 30% have no connection at all.

Intellect suggests that consumers could also be hindered by "a mass of different technologies", which apparently puts the "design and configuration of a home network beyond the scope of most people". We're not so sure, after all most modern kit comes with Wi-Fi and this normally makes it quite easy to hook everything up.

Never the less Intellect has set out a series of recommendations to help address the problems, which includes the creation of a Connected Home Forum to help bring the key players together. It also wants to explore alternative funding approaches for networking new and existing homes, such as including the cost of implementing a home network in your mortgage/remortgage.

The report further suggests that the government, Intellect, Broadband Stakeholder Group (BSG) and Race Online 2012 should develop a new approach to broadband adoption driven by healthcare and entertainment services. In reality some of these ideas are nice but we suspect that Connected Homes will continue to evolve naturally.