Home Networks Are the New Industry Battleground

While the telecommunications industry has spent the past few decades touting the ever-increasing bandwidth of their various broadband products, a panel of top cable experts said that consumers are increasingly looking to how those services perform as they continue to pile devices and applications onto their networks. Users are becoming more concerned with how their different applications and services interact with their broadband network, Charter's Justin Colwell said. Home networks are getting more sophisticated as they increasingly have to handle more and more devices per home. Colwell said Charter averages about 15 devices connected to its Wi-Fi network per customer. Ultimately, this transformation highlights the importance of a home's Local Area Network (LAN). “If you don’t have a good home LAN, it’s like putting bicycle tires on the back of a dragster,” Colwell said.