It replaces the broader and less formal Smart Wiring format that has been in place for a number of years and has been developed in partnership with a much wider range of industry interests, including Telstra, Clipsal, HPM, Hills and Milcom.

It has now been accepted by the Communication Alliance, a group that brings together all the players in the telco sector, the service providers, installers and NBN Co.

The SWC hopes that the new Smart Wiring Code could ultimately form the basis for formal recognition in the Building Code of Australia, and that it would ultimately be mandated by State and Local Governments across Australia.

With online gadgets in every room and optical fibre at the front door, now is the time to start setting some higher standards for the smart home.

Recent consultations with the National Broadband Network Corporation (NBN Co.) suggest there may still be some way to go before we are all enjoying fast connectivity at home.

While NBN Co. says the $43 billion, largely fibre-based network will still happen within the promised eight year timeframe, and deliver approximately 100Mbps to most people, doubts remain.

The consultations have shown that debate is still raging in the wider industry, particularly when it comes to crucial points, such as cost, services and timelines. In fact, financial services firm Goldman Sachs JBWere raised that flag last year, suggesting that only half the country’s homes would have access to the updated network by 2017. Further, questions have been raised about NBN Co.’s commitment in only wholesaling layer 2 bitstream services while leaving it up to other providers to offer applications like voice or video.

While we can expect the jousting to continue for some time yet, there is one thing that most people do agree on, which is fibre’s capacity to deliver major social, economic and environmental benefits.

While Australia may not yet rate internationally in terms of fibre penetration (we didn’t make the list of the top 15 developed countries by the Fibre To The Home Council (FTTHC)), we clearly recognise the benefits of a fibre-based network. This became clear last year when the Australian Government made the announcement that it would build the NBN itself, scoring headlines right around the world as a result.

Clearly FTTH is a growth industry. In the first six months of 2009, the number of fibre-based broadband subscribers grew by 15% globally, which equates to approximately six million new accounts. Further, it is the Asia-Pacific region that leads the global fibre penetration rankings, with South Korea, Hong Kong, Japan and Taiwan taking the first four places.

For the Australian market, NBN Co. predicts that it will eventually offer fibre-based services to some eight million homes, and the Federal Government has already mandated that all green field developments must have fibre infrastructure in place from day one.

Unfortunately that’s where regulations and standards end and what occurs between the node to the rest of the house is left to chance and random market forces.

The companies behind many of these so called ‘smart estates’ are trying to make sure that their homes have some capacity to deal with a higher intelligence at their front door.

Telstra has been recommending for a number of years that homes within their Velocity estates, which have access to an FTTH infrastructure, install some form of smart wiring. Over at Opticomm it’s a similar story. But new estates will only account for a fraction of the homes that will be touched by fibre, which is why the Smart Wiring Consortium is reaching out to the broader building and IT industries to create what they are calling a Smart Home Code of Practice.

Smart Wiring already has the benefit of being a voluntary, national standard designed to handle and distribute home technology with guaranteed performance. Training and accreditation programs are now in place across the country and the format is backed by many industry heavyweights, such as CEDIA and NECA.

Launched five years ago, the Smart Wiring Consortium has also developed a significant market presence. The latest survey conducted by the Copper Development Centre (CDC), a member of the Smart Wiring Consortium, and the Housing Industry Association (HIA) shows that some form of Smart Wiring is now present in just over one third of all new homes nationally, with particularly strong uptake in Queensland and Western Australia.

The research also found that Smart Wiring now has universal recognition in the building industry and strong brand awareness by consumers, who are increasingly asking builders for it to be installed.

The Smart Wiring Consortium would now like to build on that momentum to create an open platform that can be used alongside the NBN roll out. Working groups made up of members of the Smart Wiring Consortium, as well as other companies such as Hills, Opticomm and the Australian Industry Group, have been meeting to develop a Code of Practice for broad adoption.

The Code, which is expected to be in place by April, will not only define specific technical functionalities of a home, such as automation and entertainment, but will standardise the cabling and wiring requirements to make it happen.

“The roll out of fibre to the home is probably one of the most significant events to happen in this country for a very long time, but it will be a largely lost opportunity if we don’t address distribution inside the home,” says CDC spokesman John Fennell.

“But, this issue is still being ignored by government.

“Super fast broadband will have a profound impact on our homes and the way live in them, and we need to make sure that they can respond efficiently and flexibly.”

Nowhere is that more obvious than in moves to make our homes reduce their power, water and carbon footprint.

This initiative has been underway for most of this century (think solar panel and insulation rebates, ever broadening green building codes and home energy audits), but is poised to get an even bigger jolt from a far more active energy and resource management system.

Key to this fundamental change is undoubtedly robust internet, working in tandem with smart appliances and energy meters as part of a much broader smart grid.

It will have been hard to miss the buzz on smart grids, but in essence they are network-wide upgrades using technology to makeover the supply, distribution and consumption of energy domestically.

Energy companies will not only be able to more freely source a range of power from traditional to alternative sources like solar or wind, but will actively offer consumers new ways to buy and manage energy once it reaches their homes.

The US is already pouring billions of stimulus dollars into smart grids while, here in Australia, the Rudd Government has launched the $100 million Smart Grid, Smart City project through the National Energy Efficiency Initiative program.

While global spending is still fairly low, market analyst NextGen says that global spending on smart grids, including hardware, software, installation and integration, will hit $33.4 billion by 2014.

This brave new world is all a lot closer than many people think and the NBN layer across the country will only hasten the process.

Already the smart meters that are being rolled in to millions of homes, and the promise of smart appliances from the likes of Whirlpool and GE, mean that our homes could soon be in a two-way conversation with utility companies.

Opticomm and the NEC have now begun to showcase just how this may work in practice; two of their fibre-backed communities are using smart grid electricity metering to provide real-time energy data to a touch screen in each house.

“All of this really needs to happen if we’re really going to make a difference to domestic energy costs and demand,” John says. “But, once again, the way the home is wired will be crucial and we can’t simply hope that wireless will some day catch up with the technology and be able to deliver the speeds and digital content we’ll need.”

Beginning last year, the CDC and the University of Sydney’s Warren Centre ran a number of forums with industry organisations, such as CSIRO and NECA, and private companies, including Intel, Integral Energy and Clipsal, with an aim to develop an industry-based network committed to improving residential energy management.

Under the leadership of the Warren Centre, that initiative will continue through 2010.