The emerging G.hn standard took a shot in the arm this week when predictably the UPA power line chip maker DS2 of Spain said it would have silicon out by the 3rds quarter, just as the last hurdle in the standards process was cleared on schedule.
G.hn is supposed to run over power, coax and phone lines with the same protocols and equal adeptness, at speeds fast enough to convey HD video around a home, some 700 Mbps or so.
Rival factions at HomePlug and MoCA in the form of dominant chip makers Entropic and Intellon, made it clear last year that they would not support G.hn and instead said they would work together combine their own technologies.
In direct response to that positioning, Daniel Drolet, Chair of the UPA Board said this week, ‘At a time when other organizations are working to finalize technologies that are over 5 years old. The ITU-T G.Hn group has proved that it can quickly produce a robust standard with just one MAC and PHY that will meet the increasing bandwidth requirements of today’s and tomorrow’s digital home. We are keen to promote this technology and are eagerly awaiting its commercial introduction later this year.’
The PR machine for G.hn is on track to open doors at operators in time for supporting announcements this year, but the proof will be in the early silicon samples that come out and a lot will ride on the expertise of DS2 to get it right first time.
The ITU-T committee which supervises the G.Hn standard said this week that the Data Link Layer (DLL) and coexistence protocol effectively completes the standard, clearing the way for silicon vendors to bring chips to market based upon this next generation wired networking standard. DS2 has already demonstrated interoperability between UPA technology-based home networking equipment and their prototypes using G.Hn at CES in January.