Name: The Future Home in the 5G Era
Rating: 4.1 (123 reviews)
Author: Jefferson Wang, George Nazi, Boris Maurer & Amol Phadke

What’s in it for me? Discover the opportunities and challenges of the Future Home era.

Imagine waking up to the smell of coffee and eggs, freshly prepared for you by your automatic kitchen. Your smart closet has already picked out and ironed your outfit for the day. As you take a shower, you watch the news, projected onto your bathroom wall, as your digital butler schedules the autonomous car share service that will take you to work.

Sounds like a sci-fi scenario? It could be reality sooner than you think!

Many of the technologies that could allow our homes to become truly “smart” already exist. One of those is the new 5G wireless standard for telecommunication. But innovations in edge computing, eSIMs, and Internet of Things technologies also play an important role.

If you’re unsure what any of these terms mean, don’t worry. These blinks will introduce you to these core technologies of the Future Home – as well as the smart services and devices they could enable. Moreover, they’ll let you in on the opportunities and challenges the Future Home will bring for different businesses.

You’ll learn

how the 5G wireless standard will revolutionize smart home technology;
what hurdles home service providers will have to overcome; and
which companies are best equipped to become the leaders of the Future Home industry.

Our Future Homes will be hyper-connected, hyper-personalized technology hubs.

WiFi-enabled TVs, smart thermostats, automated grocery delivery – many homes today are already enhanced by digital services and devices.

But even though these gadgets are connected to the internet, they’re not connected to each other. Your Philips smart light and your Apple TV, for instance, can’t communicate to create the perfect lighting ambience for your movie night.

Yet this is precisely what a truly smart home should be able to do: coordinate a variety of digital services and devices to perfectly suit your needs.

The key message here is: Our Future Homes will be hyper-connected, hyper-personalized technology hubs.

What would a perfect Future Home look like?

In order to get a sense of what’s possible, let’s imagine a day in the life of an average family living in the Future Home era. Meet the Smiths.

It’s Saturday morning, and husband Paul is playing with his 2-year-old son Winnie in the garden. In the background, an autonomous lawn mower quietly clips the yard. Paul is trying to teach Winnie how to count to 10, but he’s interrupted when his wife Susan calls him into the house. So Paul hands Winnie a smart, talking teddy bear that picks up with the counting lesson where he left off. The teddy bear also has a nanny cam, so it can send an alert to both parents should it sense any danger to Winnie.

Inside, Paul finds his wife Susan reprimanding their 8-year-old daughter Katherine for breaking one of the smart smoke detectors with her bouncy ball. The home command node has immediately registered the damage, and the digital voice assistant now asks Susan if she wants to order a replacement. Susan agrees, and the new smoke detector is delivered by drone within an hour. When it arrives, she just has to take it out of the box and plug it into its socket – no setup, no installment – and the new device is immediately integrated into the central network.

In the afternoon, Susan has her yearly at-home physical examination. She goes to a designated room in the house, where her doctor greets her over video chat. The doctor can measure Susan’s vitals over her smart wristband. Good news – her blood pressure has lowered! To celebrate, Susan takes Katherine on a virtual walk with grandma Dottie.

Seamless, easy-to-use, and interactive – the Smiths live in the ideal Future Home. By integrating a number of digital services and devices, it can solve simple problems on its own, assist with complex ones, and anticipate future issues.

And this wasn’t simply an exercise in imagination. As we’ll see in the next blink, such Future Homes could be just around the corner.

5G will pave the road to the Future Home.

5G – it’s one of those hype words you’ve heard a thousand times, yet probably still couldn’t explain to a friend.

But the word itself isn’t all that mysterious: “5G” simply stands for “Fifth Generation,” signifying the fifth upgrade of the international standard for wireless connectivity.

New consumer trends will shape Future Home technology.

The consumer technology of the future will be shaped by the needs of future consumers – predominantly Millennials and members of Gen Z.

By 2030, Gen Zers will have come of age, and Millennials will reach the height of their spending power. Both generations have distinct expectations when it comes to their work, home, and social lives – expectations that will drive the next big home tech trends.

The biggest challenges for the Future Home will be data fragmentation, privacy, and cost.

In a previous blink, we learned that 5G could bring us a big step closer to the Future Home. For example, 5G could streamline wireless protocols to make devices more compatible with each other.

But all that is of little use if the companies making those devices are unwilling to share data with one another. And there’s plenty of other hurdles to overcome before automated drone delivery and virtual doctor appointments can become reality.

Key ideas in The Future Home in the 5G Era

What is The Future Home in the 5G Era about?

The Future Home in the 5G Era (2020) envisions the hyper-connected home of the future. How will our domestic lives change when new technologies such as 5G, AI, and edge computing become ubiquitous? And what challenges and opportunities do smart homes hold for businesses? Combining original research and market knowledge, the experts of leading consultancy company Accenture explain what you need to know about the coming era of the future home.

About the Author

Jefferson Wang, George Nazi, Boris Maurer, and Amol Phadke are technology consultancy leaders and directing managers at Accenture, a multinational service company for strategy, consulting, digital, and technological operations. Seated in Ireland, Accenture provides services to around three quarters of the companies of the Fortune Global 500.