Home, Sweet Digital Home

Weaving 3Com's Home Net

3Com's Digital Home strategy is based on four components and dozens of products. The networking building blocks are the tools to move data over the network, entertainment systems, telephone links to the network, and home automation.

First and foremost is the network itself, through which all data travels. Products like 3Com's recently announced $249 Home Gateway package let your various devices share a broadband connection, enable computers and digital devices to communicate with each other, and provide a basic firewall to prevent hackers from busting into your digital home.

3Com offers three flavors of networks: It has networks based on standard telephone lines, Ethernet networks, and wireless networking products. All three systems have pros and cons, and are best suited for certain needs.

But 3Com is focusing on giving you better reasons to network your home than for simple printer-sharing. On Tuesday, the company bought Internet radio firmKerbango for $80 million. The Internet radio device looks like a radio but tunes in to audio from the Internet and can also play MP3 digital music files. Kerbango has access to about 5000 Net-based stations and can be hooked up to your home stereo. 3Com expects to release it this fall, priced at about $300.

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3Com is also working with the set-top box company NetTV, which makes a device (called a NetTV) that allows you to surf the Web on your TV set. 3Com says it will bundle its latest cable and DSL high-speed modems with the NetTVs to get people watching broadband video content on their existing boob tubes.

Later this year, 3Com expects to market its own Internet appliance. The unit will offer simple access to the Web and communication tools like real-time messaging and e-mail.

Telephony services are also a big part of 3Com's network push. It currently sells an Internet protocol phone that works primarily on office computer networks, but could find its way into the home. Someday, consumers will want to marry their telephones to computer networks, 3Com suggests. This would enable you to have multiple phone lines in one house without paying the phone company a dime. Also, once your phone can talk to your home network, you can route phone messages to e-mail by managing your phone system from a PC.

Lastly, once you're wired to the hilt you'll be able to relinquish all household control to a simple network management tool. Upcoming home automation tools will let you monitor and control your digital life from anywhere in the world by sending commands via the Internet. Someday soon you'll be able to cook dinner, program your meal-time music, send instant messages to tell the kids that dinner is ready, and set the burglar alarm on your vacation home--all before you sit down to eat.