WELCOME TO THE `SMART HOUSE'.

RESIDENTIAL GATEWAYS ARE POISED TO POUNCE AS BROADBAND PORTALS FOR THE NETWORKED HOME

Thanks to the potential of the residential gateway, the home of the future is starting to take on Jetsonian proportions. Get ready, George and Astro, the future may not be very far away.

Serving as the "brains" of the "smart home," the residential gateway is being touted as a portal device that distributes and shares the bandwidth that runs in and out of homes, enabling a cadre of voice, video and data services and applications. Together with a wireless or wireline home networking platform, that same bandwidth

can then also be flowed to all classes of consumer electronics devices in the house, including televisions, personal computers, personal digital assistants (PDAs), Web pads and cellular phones. Additionally, that same gateway could also serve as a bandwidth hub for smart appliances. For instance, when a gateway is married with a home network, refrigerators potentially could notify owners when a component is failing, and coffee machines could be directed to prepare a fresh pot of Joe by 8 a.m. every weekday.

OK, sounds good. But will the consumer market actually support or even want this futuristic web of equipment and networking? The early indication is a resounding yes.

Provided the forecasts are correct, the potential for such consumer needs could drive an extremely fruitful market for both service operators and equipment vendors. Indeed, research firm Allied Business Intelligence (ABI) predicts global residential equipment revenues alone could skyrocket from $298 million in 2000 and approach $5 billion in 2005.

With that much green at stake, the current crop of set-top vendors and cable modem manufacturers, as well as a new breed of broadband gateway players, are lining up to offer varying products, all with the "residential gateway" label firmly affixed.

Like any nascent service, of course, the requisite "debate on several fronts" runs rampant. For residential gateways in particular, the issue being discussed with the most frequency today centers on the type of equipment that should be installed, and its physical location.

Some companies simply want the equipment to resemble today's …