Connectivity has given smartphones a leg-up over dedicated compact cameras. Illustration: Karl Hilzinger.
You may have noticed that there has been a lot of discussion about the bandwidth and types of cables required to connect Australian homes for broadband services. While this is an important debate, it is largely ignoring the big opportunity to develop applications that will usher in a new era of services and business opportunities in Australia.
Applications that haven't been created yet will provide new ways for people to access health, energy, education, retail, security, entertainment and many more services. They will also create an opportunity for Australian software and service companies to become global leaders in this part of the emerging digital economy.
The technology within Australian homes is rapidly changing. Fast disappearing is the era of dial-up connections with a single computer per house. Today's pre-NBN or first-generation broadband homes typically have about four to six connected devices, such as computers, tablets and smartphones.
This is about to change with the emergence of the "internet of things": a world with many more devices connected to the internet. Cisco predicts that Australia will have 142 million connected devices by 2016, about six for every Australian, with many of these in our homes.
What will these devices look like? For a start, there will be many more devices with screens. These will include more computers as well as their many derivatives such as laptops, notebooks and ultrabooks. There will be even more smartphones, with their numbers predicted to match Australia's population by 2016. There are also predictions that 50 per cent of Australians will be using a tablet within three years.
Increasingly, other domestic devices also will be connected – both familiar ones such as televisions, set-top boxes, energy meters and security monitors, and unexpected ones such as washing machines, fridges, weight scales and even lights. The point of connecting these devices and sensors is to allow us to have greater control over our environment, reduce energy consumption, and improve access to a new world of home services.
Interesting things start to happen when more and more things are connected. As when the internet started to connect computers together to create game-changing applications and services, so too will the networking of home-based devices create new enterprises and tools.
Economists call this the "network effect", where the economic value obtained from networks increases in a manner related to the increasing number of connections.
For people however, the value of broadband will be experienced through apps used on their increasing number of smart devices. These apps will provide simple, intuitive and fun ways to communicate, be entertained and access information and services. They will be used predominantly via fixed broadband services to send and receive data.
In Australia, a strong and vibrant industry of app developers has emerged, building globally successful apps such as Fruit Ninja, Flight Control and others. Our developers have built a reputation for innovation, creativity and technical smarts.
The Australian Centre for Broadband Innovation (ACBI), a collaborative research initiative supported by CSIRO and NICTA, Australia's two leading technology research organisations, is already developing practical services for Australia's broadband homes. Among them are the Smarter, Safer Homes project to support the wellbeing of older Australians living independently via non-invasive in-home sensors. The app also allows its users to share this information with their families, carers and clinicians.
There's also the energy management systems, and the Social TV project – the next-generation version of catch-up television, which will allow users to discover and share high-definition video content in richer and more efficient ways.
We at the CSIRO have also worked with iiNet to develop a new home gateway device that will help connect the increasing number of devices in a home using different wireless technologies.
However, there are many more apps and services still to be invented and developed for Australia's broadband-connected homes. These homes will present an opportunity for Australian developers to build apps for the new environment. Australia's reputation as an early adopter of technology and with major broadband infrastructure investment programs means we are well-positioned to be a leading developer of these apps across the world.
The Australian Centre for Broadband Innovation, in partnership with Intel, Foxtel, iiNet, and the NSW Government, has launched a Broadband4Apps competition for software developers to showcase what this next generation of apps might look like.
The competition will help Australians better understand what is possible through the smart use of broadband, and help accelerate the ability of Australian developers to realise these new business opportunities.
Colin Griffiths is director of CSIRO's Australian Centre for Broadband Innovation.
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