News on the Future of Home Networking

Letter from HomePNA

As we head toward the end of Q1, we have made significant progress in the alliance. Our piece of the home networking industry shows little signs of a significant slowdown, as the media demonstrates that the broad home entertainment industry flourishes. In the meantime, HomePNA focuses on securing its future, with an eye on forward-thinking and leadership to promote the new generation of home networking that involves the G.hn technology standard.

Current and prospective members unaware of the tie between HomePNA and G.hn may not realize that the alliance supports the continuing G.hn effort and some members have been working on it since the G.hn group completed standardization of the HomePNA 3.1 spec as Recommendation G.9954 in Jan 2007. We feel that the more cooperation and support the work has the better the end result will be and that the advantages of a single world wide existing-wire standard will increase the revenue opportunity for everyone. In that spirit, HomePNA and HomeGrid announced a liaison agreement making it easier for our organizations to cooperate more closely to better support the work.

The liaison agreement with HomeGrid promotes the International Telecommunications Union with all-wire G.hn home networking standard. The ITU, which approved the baseline for the Recommendation G.9960 late last year, is scheduled to approve the final recommendation by September 2009. The new "all-wire" standard operates over coax, phone wires and powerline at speeds up to one Gigahertz per second.

With G.9960 released last December as promised, G.hn builds an enviable track record. Remember, it's only been two years since the same group released the world's first two wire home networking standard (HomePNA 3.1/G.9954) - which was only two years after they released the HomePNA 3.0 standard which set the bar for this generation of high-performance triple-play-ready multimedia home networking standards - a major release every two years, which is an impressive track record for a standards group.

We received some impressive PR coverage and some mainstream e-news portal picked up the announcement, including Business Week, CNBC, Yahoo and TMC.net. The overall tech industry craves good news and we obliged with our announcement. Our Marketing Work Group has been pitching new story angles to the press and we've received some interest to run some industry trends and G.hn features stories under our byline. We're excited to receive the interest to help increase our visibility with the home networking worldwide market.

Speaking of worldwide markets, recent interest from prospective members from across the globe has dramatically increased. Our members have been working with a number of Asian and South American companies to expand our global interests. We've also recently picked up a few new members and expect to attract more as we move forward. We believe HomePNA offers the best solution to distribute triple-play services throughout the home, and the industry knows it.

Please don't hesitate to send us an e-mail with any questions. You can send all queries to Rich Nesin, executive director, at rnesin@homepna.org.

William "Bill" Simmelink
President, HomePNA

www.homepna.org

Installation Guideline - Tips and Tricks

Professional Installation Recommendations 2: Sources of Impairments

HomePNA is a high speed digital network that, like digital cable TV and other high performance home networking technologies, requires good connectors and connections to operate. HomePNA 3.1 operates well over existing coax cables installed for analog or digital cable television service providing that the coax is not damaged and that there are no defective or inappropriate components installed. HomePNA member JDSU provides the following types of impairment sources that can be encountered by an installer.

1. Defective connectors -- these can cause a cable to be open, shorted, or have loss. They can also cause standing waves.
2. Splitters -- these have inherent loss (HomePNA is designed to compensate for the loss encountered in most installations). Splitters can cause standing waves (low quality splitter, open port) and can be improperly installed.
3. Lose, worn or bad barrels and wall plates
4. Un-terminated coax segment
5. Crimped, pinched or damaged coax
6. Defective or improperly installed diplexer
7. Amplifiers or A/B switches

HomePNA strongly recommends that installers test the wiring before and during installation to ensure that the network will provide proper performance. The full JDSU presentation and other installation information is available on the HomePNA members-only website to all HomePNA members.

Home Networking Market News

AT&T's Plan to spend about $18 Billion on Wireless and Wireline

HomePNA member AT&T said it will spend about $11 billion this year - out of a total capital spending plan estimated to be between $17 billion and $18 billion--to expand and enhance both its wireline and wireless broadband networks. The wireline portion of the investment will go largely toward ongoing expansion of AT&T U-Verse fiber network. While the overall spending for this year still represents lower capex than last year, it is at least re-assuring for vendors to hear AT&T starting to talk more specifically about how it will spend the money. Read more on Network World website.

In This Issue

Installation Guidelines - Tips and Tricks

Home Networking Market News

This is YOUR HomePNA

HomePNA is your organization! We encourage and welcome opportunities to promote all members and their products with writing success stories, posting member white papers, collaborating on white papers and other collateral, providing blog topics, and more. We want to hear from you anytime. Please send e-mail to Michelle Gamble-Risley at mrisley@homepna.org