Leadership Insights Provides a Look at How Matter Is Developing

The CEOs of the Connectivity Standards Alliance and the Wi-Fi Alliance recently put their heads together to discuss the impact of both bodies on the development of the smart home.

In a newly released “Leadership Insights” discussion, recorded at the IFA Berlin 2024 event, Tobin Richardson (CSA) and Kevin Robinson (Wi-Fi Alliance) discuss how Matter has worked with Wi-Fi and the evolution of the smart home space since Zigbee.

It’s an interesting chat, but what are the takeaways that Matter from this discussion?

What We Learned from the CSA and the Wi-Fi Alliance

The chat between Richardson and Robinson is worth watching, running to just over 20 minutes.

However, if you want a summary of what they discussed, we’ve collated some key takeaways.

• Both (unsurprisingly!) agree that Matter is a significant step towards universal interoperability in the smart home. Security and privacy is a key priority for Matter, and collaboration with the Wi-Fi Alliance is important in achieving this.

• Interoperability is a focus across the smart home industry, and the collaboration between the CSA and Wi-Fi Alliance is seen as crucial for ensuring integration with smart devices. Certification and standardization are seen by both as important steps to build trust and confidence in consumers, as do regular updates. (The discussion was recorded before the release of the Matter 1.4 specification.)

• Expanding on this last point, consumer trust and confidence is considered to be mostly influenced by interoperability, security, and privacy. It is reassuring that this is recognized, as progress in some of these aspects has been slow.

• Meanwhile, Wi-Fi unsurprisingly remains key to connecting smart devices, with increased speed, range, and security crucial to growing the smart home market.

From Project CHIP to Matter

An interesting aspect of the conversation was Tobin Richardson’s explanation on why the Matter name was chosen, following its early existence as “Project Chip”, and why the Zigbee Alliance became the Connectivity Standards Alliance.

“It reflects kind of the transformation that was happening in the market, this notion of openness for all Smart Home Products, really getting past closed ecosystems to open ecosystems […] It really follows this kind of path of ensuring that the ecosystems are open products, are usable, interoperable anywhere by anybody... but also at the same time with this proliferation of devices making sure that we're doing that in a way that respects privacy and is ensuring the highest level of security.”

Remembering the Matter was conceived as a future-proof smart home and IoT standard puts this into context.

Leaning Lessons from the Wireless (Networking)

The issue of collaboration is important to the development of Matter. Both the CSA and the Wi-Fi Alliance have hundreds of members, with a lot of crossover. But as Richardson notes, Wi-Fi is a “mature technology” and while the Wi-Fi Alliance is still developing, collaboration between the two organizations is important.

“We're always balancing what is the priority of the day, what is the priority of the next year, and then working on that collaboration. I will say I think we have a lot to learn from the Wi-Fi Alliance in terms of how to well you know how to do that, but also making sure that we can continue to collaborate on new features [and] new improvements to the the standards.”

Sustainability is a key driver for both organizations. Matter has already made headway with bringing in controls for heating systems and EV charging. The Wi-Fi Alliance is moving closer towards low energy technologies following a recent study that Robinson relates, which determined a difference of "three megatons of CO2 just for Europe" between an indoor Wi-Fi network and an outdoor WAN serving the same devices.

That's the sort of lesson that both groups can consider.

Collaboration, Interoperability, and Consumer Confidence

The main conclusion to be drawn from the chat is that the Wi-Fi Alliance and the CSA are collaborating towards improved security, privacy, and interoperability. Success should result in improved consumer confidence in smart home technology.

I think it is important to note that while Matter will clearly underpin compatibility and interoperability in the smart home, there is no desire for it to be anything more than a badge, a standard printed on the side of a box, much like Wi-Fi, or Bluetooth, or Zigbee.

Posters and threads on online forums have expressed concern than the CSA doesn’t seem to know what it is doing, is moving too slowly, etc. Based on this discussion, it would seem that in truth, introducing and maturing a new standard requires planning, collaboration, and – unusually in the world of technology – some patience.