PCH over IP – No fudge please.

Project Connected Home over IP needs to avoid the fudge of compromise.

• Making all connected devices compatible is an excellent idea but this is going to be very difficult to achieve as these alliances very often result in a poorly performing standard or abject failure.
• Effectively almost everyone in the connected home space has signed up to form Project Connected Home over IP (PCH over IP) that will develop and promote a new single, royalty-free connectivity standard for devices to communicate.
• The list is long and includes Apple, Google, Amazon, Zigbee Alliance, Samsung SmartThings and IKEA to name but a few.
• Including Zigbee is an excellent idea because many of the traditional domestic electric fixture manufacturers and chip makers are members ensuring that almost everyone in the industry is part of this initiative.
• The project envisages a utopia where the consumer can buy any smart home product from any manufacturer and it will just work and work optimally.
• This sounds excellent but as always with these things the devil is going to be in the details and the different approach being taken many of these companies to the ecosystem is likely to mean a lot of infighting and compromise resulting in a fudged standard.
• For example, Apple monetises the ecosystem via premium device pricing meaning that it can afford to prioritise user privacy whereas Google monetises the data generated to generate revenue.
• These two approaches are fundamentally incompatible, and this is likely to cause problems in the working groups when the standards are being set for security and privacy.
• The project is going to be overseen by the Zigbee Alliance which should ensure impartial and objective management, but there are still some large pitfalls to avoid:
  • First Glacial slowness: Projects like these set their standards in committees.
  • Typically, the way it works is that the participating representatives from the members are split into a series of committees each of which deals with one aspect of the standard.
  • These are then put together at the end to produce a single working standard upon which everyone has agreed.
  • This is a very slow and arduous process and unless this is expedited by Zigbee, will take a very long time to produce anything.
  • Second, Performance: which is usually the biggest problem.
  • The members of each committee have different agendas which are to ensure the best possible outcome for their company’s products.
  • This means that each member will have a preferred implementation that suits his product better and very often this will differ between the members.
  • What often results in these situations is a fudged compromise where the technology has not been implemented to suit the preferences of the committee members rather than optimal performance.
  • This leads to suboptimal performance from the standard which has often led to its failure.
  • The many attempts to create Linux and Java software for mobile phones between 2000 and 2007 are great examples of this.
• If everyone in the industry starts to use this standard then its weaker performance may be less of an issue, but there are a number of players: Qualcomm, Broadcom, Xiaomi and so on who have a lot of involvement in the smart home and are not present here.
• These could come up with proprietary systems that outperform the open standard causing manufacturers and consumers to think twice about its adoption.
• Hence, PCH over IP needs to avoid compromise and fudge wherever it can and the responsibility for this lands squarely on the shoulders of the Zigbee Alliance.
• I am sure the Zigbee Alliance is fully aware of these issues but whether it has the bench strength to ensure a good outcome remains to be seen.
• If this works, it will be great for the consumer, but history leads me to be cautiously optimistic at best.