The home of the near future [Consumer Tech Forecasts]

The homes we have to look forward to in 2020 will feature technology in a more discrete way. Ten years ago, if you were lucky enough to have an ADSL connection, you would be able to download at speeds approaching 300kbps. Now this may seem fairly small, but it was a huge leap on the dial-up connections. BT is in the process of upgrading its fibre optic network and, by their reckoning, 40 per cent of consumers will be able to access broadband speeds of up to 40Mbps by the time the London Olympic torch is lit in 2012. This rollout represents the effect of expanding fibre to the street cabinet. Virgin Media can offer similar speeds today. The main driver for these increased speeds is video-on-demand services. Originally, the World Wide Web was envisaged to transmit static Web pages. But when you consider that a 30-minute high-definition (HD) video can consume the equivalent of 72,000 emails - you can see why this increase is needed. Therefore, the next stage will be to build out fibre directly to each home which will allow broadband speeds to reach anywhere between 100Mbps and 300Mbps.