Telia and Sun have agreed to jointly develop and demonstrate home gateway software to deliver a constant Internet connection into homes. Telia is currently working to roll-out the concept to a small collection of homes in Europe and will conduct initial field trials in select areas of Scandinavia during the year 2000.

This connected home initiative involves collaborating on the development of network-delivered services via networked devices in the home using Sun's Java and Jini technologies. The initiative will involve typical products and services for the home including kitchen appliances, interactive entertainment center, home control and security system and home office.

An example of this technology effort was shown in Sun's .com Home at the Consumer Electronics Show. The collaborative effort between Telia and Sun demonstrates remote access to interactive home security systems. Utilizing several networked technologies, the demonstration illustrates how a homeowner can see, talk to, and let a repairman or family member into their home remotely via a cell phone.

Telia plans to aggressively rollout broadband services to the household market in Sweden. Telia plans to reach 1 million homes in the next 2 years after investing 1.4 billion SEK in the year 2000 alone. The connected home initiative needs to be seen in this context as the entire infrastructure for delivering services to the mass market will change radically both over the fixed and mobile networks.

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