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Note from HomePNA President
Welcome to this edition of HomePNA eNews Monthly. The talk about town has been about G.hn. We've been focusing many of our blog posts to help dispel myths about G.hn and its impact on HomePNA. We've assured all of our readers that G.hn is good for HomePNA, HomePNA will co-exist well with G.hn, and future HomePNA specifications will include broad support for G.hn.
G.hn creates a single standard for home networking over existing wires - coax, phone wires and powerline - with the speed and features needed by tomorrow's high-performance applications. In our blog, we've assured readers that G.hn will simplify existing-wire home networking and will not replace wireless standards such as Wi-Fi (nobody wants to trade their wireless laptop connection for a wire). It will compliment the wireless technologies, not eliminate them. We expect the home of the future to have both. And HomePNA is very excited about its role in working with G.hn to distribute high-speed triple-play services over both coax and phone wires.
We hope our members are just as excited and look forward to the possibilities. We expect the telcos to remain heavily involved in its development and to keep the work on track so that its final approval from the ITU comes right on schedule.
Now if you have not been reading our blog, we hope you will. Please go check out the latest post at: http://homepnablog.typepad.com.
Sincerely,
Richard Nesin
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Why Telco Installation Times Vary Tens of thousands of telco IPTV installations ago, HomePNA featured a blog about IPTV installation times. In that March 27 post we noted that as much as industry watchers would like draw comparisons about home networking from IPTV installation times, it's a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma (apologies to Winston Churchill).
The differences between a European telco offering HomePlug and a North American telco installing HomePNA is much more than HomePlug versus HomePNA (or MOCA, UPA, HD-PLC, etc.). In some cases - especially North America -- most of the stuff done during installation has little to do with home networking and more to do with the IPTV service itself.
So what does the installer do when he gets to the customer's home, you ask? Several HomePNA members have done ride-alongs on telco IPTV installations so we are able to shed a little light on the process (at least for some North American telcos).
If you have had cable or satellite service installed, you won't be surprised to learn that the first step is to review the order with the customer. The installer then does a site survey and determines where the passive components, residential gateway and set-top boxes will be installed. For older homes it's likely that there is old equipment that needs to be disconnected.
Since the new IPTV service may involve upgrading or adding new broadband service, the technician also needs to install, provision (turn on), and test new DSL or fiber service. (In some cases installers use commercial test equipment that can test both the broadband access service and the home networking wires.) If the fiber or DSL is installed on the outside of the house, the technician needs to figure out which wires he will use to bring the service into the house. The remaining equipment is then installed, middleware updated, and the system, including the home network, is tested.
In many cases, the installation also includes a wireless LAN which must be configured and tested as well. And don't forget training the customer on use of the new remote control and DVR features, setting up the customer's Internet, and so on. |
New Certified Product Spotlight
HomePortal iNID
2Wire (www.2wire.com) recently certified its new HomePortal iNID Outdoor Residential Gatway. The 2Wire HomePortal® iNID (intelligent Network Interface Device) i3802V outdoor residential gateway mounts to the side of the subscriber's home in a hardened, weather-resistant enclosure that is easily accessible to carrier technicians. This decreases the complexity and cost of carrier "truck roll" technical installations required for VDSL2 and FTTP deployments.
The series features:
- Rugged outdoor design extends the carrier's network to the edge of the home.
- Robust home networking platform distributes high-bandwidth triple play services throughout the home.
- Power module inside the home powers the HomePortal iNID through existing home phone wiring.
- User-replaceable integrated battery provides reliable backup power.
- Leading-edge bonded VDSL2 modem technology terminates outside the home, eliminating the need for dedicated "home runs" and reducing interference from home wiring.
- Remote upgrades and support, enabled by the gateway's TR-069 management interface, reduce truck rolls and customer care costs.
- Two independent HPNA channels separate IPTV from user data traffic, delivering an interruption free television viewing experience to subscribers.
- Two integrated ATAs outside the home mean cost-effective VoIP deployments, eliminating expensive truck rolls and home rewiring.
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News and Updates
Welcome New HomePNA Members
HomePNA wishes to welcome three more companies that have joined the alliance -- the only existing-wire home networking standard today for telco TV (IPTV) video distribution. New members D-Link Corp., Arcom Labs, Inc. and SerComm Corp. will promote HomePNA technology and deliver solutions for IPTV over coax and phone lines. For more information, visit the Web site at www.homepna.org.
Beyond Digital
HomePNA will formally release the new whitepaper "Beyond Digital Home Network: A Glance at the Emergence of Enterprise Home Networking" during the NXTcomm 2008 trade show scheduled to be held in Las Vegas June 16-19. Written by Michelle Gamble-Risley in collaboration with HomePNA President Rich Nesin, the paper examines the shift in the home networking experience toward the "enterprise" home network and establishes a new paradigm for reliably and conveniently integrating and delivering triple-play services throughout consumers' homes. If you happen to attend NXTcomm, please stop by the HomePNA booth to pick up your advanced copy. HomePNA will post the paper on our Web site (www.homepna.org) after the NXTcomm show.
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"This type of technology enables TELUS to cost-effectively distribute
new IP services throughout customers' homes with the reliability they
expect but without the high installation costs of running new wires."
- Ira Rowlands, Planning and Engineering Manager, Telus
"The ability to work over both coax cable and traditional phone lines
is a key advantage and we look forward to working with the industry to
enhance and standardize the technology."
-David Deas, Vice President, Networks and Services,
AT&T Laboratories, Inc.
"Eighty percent, 90 percent of installations are homes that have coax.
We absolutely have to have the (HPNA) technology; it's been a godsend
for us (because) anywhere we're launching our IPTV service there's a
good take rate ... ahead of our forecasts. They're taking multiple TVs,
multiple devices all bundled together and packaged together," Lund
said. "We wouldn't put HPNA in if it wasn't going to handle high def
PVR applications."
- Gary Lund, CTO, Bell Alliant
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