Talking to your fridge

"Most of these ITU proposals appear high bit-rate, entertainment-centric.

Home networks should be about much more than that. Energy efficiency, control, etc (to which they give lip service). These don't take much bandwidth, but require predictability, scalability, and, yes, dirt- cheap prices. This doesn't appear to be that. When we want to talk to a fridge (not just for recipes and RFID shopping = futuristic), a water heater, etc., the solution has to be cheap and simple. This doesn't appear to fit the bill, or will take layering/modification."

Rahul

I understand the point.
The only problem is not talking to your fridge; it is actually making it understand what you are talking about...
That will certainly be not so cheap.
And I would add a little bit anachronistic.
We talk about energy saving and we need devices to talk to our FRIDGE!

I guess that the old, efficient switch where you decide the temperature and the one where you can switch on and off are perfect tools to regulate "Energy efficiency"...

We are not even at the point to have one only plug that goes in ANY socket, in ANY country of this globe and we are talking about "Global Standards"!!!!
I know you have to begin somewhere and I would begin with the plugs.