It’s always hard to convince everybody that the global market leader for chips in anything can come from Spain, but in the case of Powerline Communications it has to be believed, with DS2 this week doubling the speed of its chips for signaling over power cables to 400 Mbps, close to UltraWideBand speeds.
DS2 said this week that its next generation chips will be launched next month and that the 400 mbps will enable the deployment of new HD-capable multiroom DVRs.
DS2 was a little hazy on when products from the new chips would come out, preferring to talk about the opportunity being in 2009 onwards, but the chances are that it will have products that work perfectly well from its loyal partner base by the middle of next year, if the market wants them, but it’s probably happy right now with the 200 Mbps versions, which are still in operator betas, and have yet to go into full scale deployments.
DS2 says that it is working on offering enough bandwidth for three HDTV, two SDTV streams around the home, plus usual internet traffic and says that will be required from 2009 on.
The new chips will be backward compatible with the existing 200Mbps products from DS2 so if a home has a few of one and a few of another they will talk to each other.
Jose Calero, CTO at DS2, stated: “Increased bandwidth requirements for multimedia networking applications is one of the key requirements that suppliers to the home networking, networked entertainment and last-mile BPL markets are looking for from future technology specifications.’
The real enemy here is Moca or HPNA as well as the more advanced Wi-Fi technologies, such as those offered by Ruckus Wireless, which have been a real hit in Europe, but primarily because Europe has few HD homes. DS2 has had to target costs below these technologies, but has to do it on far lower sales, so we guess that by 2009 it will have the sales volumes so that economies of scale can drive down its chip prices.
So far Belgacom, British Telecom, Portugal Telecom, Telefonica, Telecom Italia and Telia Sonera as well as global electricity utilities such as Endesa, Electricite de France, and Iberdrola have embraced Powerline through vendors such as Buffalo, D-Link, Comtrend, Corinex Communications and Netgear.
During 2008 DS2’s roadmap includes the delivery of additional features in the 200Mbps technology, as well as reducing manufacturing costs, the company says.