CEA makes telework push

Telework just won a powerful advocate, the Consumer Electronics Association. The organization wants to increase the number of broadband connected households from 20% today to 50% within five years, and sees telework - not home entertainment, as you might expect - as the means.

CEA's 1,500 member companies account for $90 billion in combined sales annually, and all profits from its mammoth Consumer Electronics Show are reinvested into furthering its industry services, which involve market research, public policy, technical standards, and education and development. In terms of telework, the group just launched a promotional campaign aimed at consumers that involves the publication of glossy literature, market research and industry partnerships.

"One of the main goals of CEA as an organization is to promote broadband deployment nationwide," says Brad Jones, CEA's manager of communications. "A good portion of our member companies are producing the products and technologies that make telework a reality. We want to show how consumer technology is allowing people to maintain work/life balance, and how products and telework are helping reduce congestion."

To continue reading, register here and become an Insider. You'll get free access to premium content from CIO, Computerworld, CSO, InfoWorld, and Network World. See more Insider content or sign in.

Telework just won a powerful advocate, the Consumer Electronics Association. The organization wants to increase the number of broadband connected households from 20% today to 50% within five years, and sees telework - not home entertainment, as you might expect - as the means.

CEA's 1,500 member companies account for $90 billion in combined sales annually, and all profits from its mammoth Consumer Electronics Show are reinvested into furthering its industry services, which involve market research, public policy, technical standards, and education and development. In terms of telework, the group just launched a promotional campaign aimed at consumers that involves the publication of glossy literature, market research and industry partnerships.

"One of the main goals of CEA as an organization is to promote broadband deployment nationwide," says Brad Jones, CEA's manager of communications. "A good portion of our member companies are producing the products and technologies that make telework a reality. We want to show how consumer technology is allowing people to maintain work/life balance, and how products and telework are helping reduce congestion."

First out is a brochure called "TechHome Broadband, the Teleworker's Guide," which welcomes readers to the "broadband generation." It lays out the basics for setting up a home office and stresses the importance of broadband. It provides a cheery, easy-to-understand overview of network technologies, as well as information on future technologies such as broadband over power line and fiber-to-the-home. There's some information on entertainment technologies, such as definitions of the various flavors of MPEG, but overall the focus is on work.

The group is forming partnerships with the Washington D.C.-based telework organizations the International Telework Association and the Telework Coalition. CEA finds the first group attractive for its industry member contacts, the second for its Capital Hill connections. In May, CEA plans to conduct a market research campaign to determine who's teleworking, why and when, Jones says.

Several factors have spurred the group's interest in telework. One is the results of new broadband research from the Pew Internet and the American Life Project. In February, the Pew Research Center surveyed 2,204 Americans, 63% of which were Internet users. It found the number of Americans with broadband access increased 60% since March 2003, to 68 million. Forty-eight million, or 39%, of Americans have high-speed access at home: That's 24% of the population. More than half (52%) of college-educated people younger than 35 have a home broadband connection.

Also important to CEA was Pew's finding that job-related tasks ranked third in reasons respondents switched from dial-up to broadband.

"People are getting broadband for job-related tasks," Jones says. "Once it's there, why not maximize its use by buying our members' products to help make telework something people can do not just at night and on the weekends, but once or twice a week? That'd get more cars off the road."