When Standards “Matter”

Lately, there’s been a lot of chatter - some of it critical - about the Connectivity Standards Alliance Matter standard. “It’s taking too long to catch on.” “It doesn’t work!” “Where’s the revolution we were promised?” I’ve heard it all before. In fact, after 20 years of working with networking standards, I’ve realized that this kind of criticism is almost a rite of passage for any meaningful standard ( Lincoln Lavoie and I used to call it “the twelve steps of standardization”).

But here’s the thing:?standards adoption takes time,?not just because of technical hurdles but because of human ones.

Sometimes, standards are tough medicine

Companies will hold onto their proprietary solutions and walled gardens as long as they possibly can. Why wouldn’t they? If their stuff works, and there’s no clearly superior alternative, the market will continue to buy their stuff. Many companies specifically rely on vertical integration and buyer lock-in for their business model. Even companies involved in creating a standard often delay its adoption if they see it as a threat to their existing business models.

I’ve seen this firsthand. Broadband Forum TR-069, which eventually became the backbone of broadband device management, didn’t really take off until years after it was standardized. The same story repeated with its successor, USP/TR-369. The technical standard was ready long before the market was ready to embrace it. It’s been published since 2018, and I?still?get asked, “Well, how many people are using it?” as if, for some reason, that indicates why anyone should use it.

If you need an even bigger example, look at IPv6. The standard was officially published in 1998, and yet, much to our CTO Tim Winters ' chagrin (he’s been working with IPv6 interoperability for two decades), we’re still talking about its adoption more than 25 years later. The technology solves very real problems (beyond just IPv4 exhaustion). However, businesses, ISPs, and enterprises resisted the switch for decades because their IPv4 setups were good enough, and implementing IPv6 required significant changes with no immediate return on investment. It took a perfect storm of mobile growth, cloud computing, and regulatory pushes to get us where we are today finally - and even now, IPv6 adoption is still incomplete.?

Change is slow not because the technology isn’t good but because companies are cautious, ecosystems are entrenched, and shifting the status quo requires more than just a better protocol.

The entrepreneurial mindset vs. the standards world

One of the biggest disconnects I’ve noticed is between the startup/entrepreneurial world and the standards world. Startups thrive on speed, disruption, and immediate impact. Standards thrive on consensus, stability, and long-term interoperability. These mindsets are often at odds with each other or, more realistically, not even on the same wavelength as each other. Startup culture has very different goals and an entirely different view of technology.

This difference trickles down into the tech media, too. Journalists are often drawn to shiny new things: bold launches, disruptive technologies, fast growth stories. On the other hand, standards organizations aren’t always the best at marketing. They’re heads-down, focused on technical committees, working groups, and draft revisions. As a result, even when a standard is quietly revolutionizing an industry, it doesn’t always get the spotlight.

The Matter snowball is rolling

For Matter, all of these dynamics are at play. Yes, adoption has been slower than some expected (and some of those expectations were manufactured by not even the CSA itself). But the shift is happening. Because here’s the secret about standards: they’re like snowballs rolling down a hill. It takes time to build momentum, but the growth is exponential once they start picking up speed.

Matter is approaching that tipping point. The coalescence of market readiness, technology maturity, and clear use cases is happening right now. And one of the biggest catalysts? ISPs and MSOs.

ISPs can make it happen if they’re brave enough

Internet Service Providers and Multi-Service Operators are uniquely positioned to accelerate Matter’s adoption. They have the infrastructure, the customer base, and - most importantly - the emerging generation of “smart” home gateways that can act as the central hub for Matter ecosystems.

These gateways aren’t just routers anymore. They’re platforms capable of running new applications, managing smart home devices, and delivering seamless experiences that users actually want. When ISPs take ownership of the smart home as the service provider for connected living, it will definitely give Matter a meaningful and necessary boost. It’s not the panacea by any means, and Matter will continue to grow and thrive on its own, but it takes someone to make the shift away from walled ecosystems and (as our CTO Tim Winters says) “give the people what they want.”

Conclusion: everyone chill out

So, to those frustrated with Matter’s pace: I get it. But having been in this world for two decades, I can tell you this is just how standards work, and we will all be better for it, as shown in almost every interoperable tech out there. The slow burn is part of the process. The snowball is rolling. The change is already happening.

Side note: I was so glad to sit down with Christopher LaPré , the Head of Technology at the CSA, on the Epik Mellon podcast, where we discussed some of these things and more. You can check out that interview here.?

Jason is the Director of Technical Marketing at QA Cafe and host of the Epik Mellon podcast. A protocol geek at heart, he has more than 20 years of computer networking experience, helping to develop internet and communications technology and translate it into value opportunities for organizations and the industry. Catch him at any event, and he’ll happily talk all things networking and philosophy over a beer.