Nearly 10 Million Homes To Undergo Digital Remodeling

Nearly 10 million U.S. homes will undergo digital remodeling by 2003 on growing demand for Internet access and rapid improvement in network technology, a computer research company said Tuesday. ``The networked digital home is becoming a reality now because we finally have compelling applications, affordable, unobtrusive networking technology, and consumer demand,'' Boyd Peterson, Vice President of the Yankee Group, said in a statement. Peterson presented the group's forecast at a symposium on networked homes in Santa Clara, California. Currently, about 650,000 of the 99 million U.S. homes have some form of networking installed, according to the group, which is based in Boston. The company said the rapid growth of high-speed broadband Internet access services will serve as a critical catalyst to the expansion of home networking. Broadband Internet brings with it the need to share access among multiple PCs and to deliver Internet and multimedia content to different appliances and areas around the home, according to the Yankee Group, a unit of Primark Corp. The projected growth in digital remodeling would occur because many of the latest options will be simple. In fact, much of the technology will be embedded into items like PCs and televisions, the company said. Of the 10 million homes to undergo digital remodeling, the Yankee Group estimated that the majority of them would use PC-based networking. ``I agree that with the trend. There'll be a huge industry for it,'' said Mark Calabria, Senior Economist at the National Association of Realtors, but noted that the Yankee Group's projection for digital remodeling may be on the high side. Calabria said home networking is still a small, niche market with demand for new homes built in metropolitan areas on the East Coast and California. Copyright 1999 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.