TDG: Broadband Gateways Move to the Living Room

According to new research from The Diffusion Group (TDG), broadband routers and gateways – the key platforms by which home networks and connected devices are enabled – are more likely to be located in the family or living room than the home office. This reverses a long-standing precedent of the digital home, a change particularly encouraging for the connected CE and broadband media industries.

TDG’s new report, "The In-Home CE Ecosystem of U.S. Broadband Households: 2010," confirms what many observers have suspected for years: the home network is becoming less about data-centric activity centered on PCs and printers, and more about piping Web-based digital media into the home.

Michael Greeson, founding partner at TDG and author of the new report, said that in 2006 only 18 percent of gateways and routers were located in the family/living room, while 39 percent were located in a home office. Today, close to one-third of all home network gateways are located in the family/living room (up 64 percent since 2006), while gateways placed in the home office declined from 40 percent to 26 percent (a drop of 35 percent).

Greeson notes that connecting CE devices to the Internet and each other via a home network is a regular activity among four in ten home network users. The closer one places the router to the primary home entertainment center (and the TV, in particular), the easier it is to connect CE and access net-based media such as Netflix and Hulu.