Will "Wired Homes" Entice High-Tech Buyers?

N E W  Y O R K, Oct. 17 -- Chalk it up to one part healthy skepticism, one part market reality.

There once was a time, not long ago, when the most wide-eyed proponents of Internet technology would confidently predict — with a straight face — that nearly every major home appliance would one day be connected to the Internet.

The people who want to connect your refrigerator to the Internet haven't gone away, and in fact are much more serious than they've ever been before.

And after years of pushing competing visions, few of which led to any real products, they're teaming up.

And this time they're determined to get their collective technological and business acts together in order to wire your next home for a level of connectivity that even they haven't fully imagined yet.

Varying Levels of Enthusiasm

Don't be surprised if someday you see Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates sharing a podium with someone like home-improvement icon Bob Vila, discussing the concept of the "connected home."

But making it happen means selling millions of prospective home buyers on ideas that go far beyond the now well-known notion of connecting all the computers in the home to a faster Internet connection.

Why not push digital music and video stored on a PC or set-top box with a hard drive to any TV or stereo system in the house? Or create a service that sends e-mail to a mobile phone when the kids get home from school each day.

Or connect the thermostat to the Web so that it can be controlled from an office PC, allowing home temperature to be set before you get home?

Electronics retailers like CompUSA and Best Buy already are gearing up for new marketing efforts to try and build consumer enthusiasm for the "smart home." But the idea also has to be sold to home builders, who are embracing it with varying levels of enthusiasm.

A study by Parks Associates, a Dallas-based consulting and research firm, estimates that about 20 percent of new homes built this year will contain some kind of "structured wiring" for computer networking, entertainment and other uses.