Netgear Seeks to Move Beyond ‘Feeds and Speeds’ to a Smart Broadband Home for Everyone

LAS VEGAS, January 7, 2013 - Netgear announced a range of broadband-focused products at the Consumer Electronics Show designed to get "the other 99 percent" of the population to use high-speed internet more effectively.

The wireless router company's CEO said that his company wanted to make sure everyone has access to high-speed broadband connectivity. He highlighted a vision of ensuring that "everything in the home that is powered by electricity should be connected to the interent," said CEO Patrick Lo.

Such "smart homes" exist for the technological elite, the 1 percent, said Lo. "But Netgear's mission is to take that to the other 99 percent, so everyone on earth will be able to enjoy the same thing."

"This is not just feeds and speeds," he said, referring to the ability to expand the reach of broadband signals, and to spread such signals around more rapidly, but the beginning of a kind of mobile intelligence through connected devices.

Among the products unveiled include a super easy-to-use remote monitoring system, an extender to boost the strength of Wi-Fi signals throughout the house, a new combined modem/router, and two television-to-device devices for sharing content within the home.

Follow Broadband Breakfast’s coverage of the Consumer Electronics Show at http://twitter.com/broadbandcensus. Our goals for CES are to promote the upcoming series of Broadband Breakfast Club events; to get the latest information on how broadband is driving digital technologies in 2013; and to test ideas for a book on technology, broadband, and digital media that Broadband Breakfast’s Publisher Drew Clark plan to write in 2013. He is on Google+ and Twitter.