Unify 2026: When the Smart Home Becomes a Smart Building

The smart home and the smart building are not the same problem.

“When the Smart Home Becomes a Smart Building, Connectivity Has to Scale” tackles one of the more underexplored tensions in the IoT industry at Unify 2026. Assumptions that hold up well in a single-family home start to break down fast in MDUs, hotels, offices, campuses, and utilities, where coverage, interference, device density, lifecycle management, and global scale introduce a different set of demands.

The session puts DECT NR+, an IPv6-compliant network layer, into the broader open standards conversation, making the case that scaling open IoT ecosystems beyond the smart home requires infrastructure built for professionally managed environments, not adapted from residential ones. For an industry increasingly focused on commercial and industrial growth, the message is well-timed: interoperability at scale is a different challenge, and it deserves its own seat at the table.

Moderator: Michelle Mindala-Freeman, SPG Advisory