With official Matter support, Eero mesh routers could soon run your smart home

We are literally right now celebrating The Verge’s 10-year anniversary in New York City, but we couldn’t throw an epic two-day event without also bringing you a teensy bit of tech news — and Eero co-founder and CEO Nick Weaver just did that at On The Verge. Weaver says that Eero, an early adopter of the Thread protocol, will be upgrading all its Thread-equipped Wi-Fi routers to fully support Matter as well. Matter is the upcoming 2022 standard that should allow for easier setup of smart home devices, with any compatible Matter host able to discover and work with any Matter client. Amazon smart home rivals Apple and Google are also on board with Matter.

“It does feel different this time,” Weaver says, asked about his company’s long support for Thread, a protocol that hadn’t shown any signs of taking off until it became part of the Matter standard. Now, many Eeros are primed to make far greater use of it.

Weaver also mentioned on stage that Eero has been exploring the idea of a cellular backup system for the Eero routers, similar to how parent company Amazon’s other brand Ring uses a cellular backup for its alarm system, though Weaver didn’t make any promises today.

When we asked whether he’s seeing any competition from cellular providers (which now offer 5G home connections that can come with their own routers), whether he sees a trend there, he seemed to brush off the idea. “The biggest trend we are seeing is people are upgrading to gigabit in droves,” he says. He says that Eero has seen 75 percent growth in its business selling Eero to ISPs. “ISPs don’t want to get service calls about their Wi-Fi routers, that’s why they go with us,” he tells us.

Weaver says the company currently designs routers independent of your internet connection — however good or bad your ISP connection is doesn’t really factor in. Right now, it’s the last mile (or realistically, the last hundred feet) to turn your cable or fiber connection into Wi-Fi across your home.

In case you’re curious what’s on Weaver’s own home network, he told Nilay and Dieter that his long list of devices includes a smart oven — and there’s an Apple HomeKit bridge among his many hubs. Will Eero support HomeKit? Weaver wouldn’t say.