75% of all US broadband households now use a home network; they are able to access a growing variety of net-based video and applications on a growing number of devices.
Nearly 40% of home network routers are now located in the primary living room, more than twice the number found in ‘home offices,’ according to TDG research.
In the last year, there has been a 26% increase in the number of broadband-networked households that place their routers in the family/living room (30% in 2001 vs. 38% in 2011). Conversely, and during the same time period, the number of those placing their routers in a ‘home office’ has declined 30% (down from 26% in 2010 to 18% in 2011).
“The migration of home network hardware from the ‘home office’ to the primary living space offers both functional and figurative insight,” said Michael Greeson, TDG founding partner and director of research.
“TDG noted in 2005 that, driven by the incessant desire to optimize their entertainment experiences, consumers would progressively place their network access point adjacent to key net-enabled video entertainment platforms such as game consoles, disc players, and PVRs. In 2012, this is precisely what we observe and most would acknowledge. The meaning of this shift, however, remains lost on the majority of observers.”
This near-linear relationship strongly supports the argument that in-home networks are seen increasingly as a means to connect key living room entertainment platforms to the internet as opposed to “networking” stationary computers and peripherals.
As net-enabled entertainment services such as Netflix became more popular, optimal placement would swing from the ‘home office’ to the living room. “Such were our predictions and such is the reality of in-home networking in this multi-source, multi-conduit universe.”
