High-speed Internet providers, however, have focused on establishing basic data lines to homes, not Jetsons-like services, said Michael Greeson, an analyst at Dallas-based Parks Associates.

"The early market for the residential gateway devices is going to tend to be more data-centric - shared peripherals, shared printers, shared Internet access," he said. "It won't be for several more years until the service providers are themselves offering true bundled service packages to the residential consumer."

Basic home networking products are now available that allow people to share a single Internet connection between one or more computers. Some are wireless.

Parks Associates estimates 608,000 households will have multiservice residential gateways by the end of 2001, but demand is expected to explode by 2004. By 2005, yearly demand is expected to be up to 2 million households with the cumulative total of 6.4 million households.

From the article "Cisco Delays Home Network Launch," by Matthew Fordahl.

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