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HomeGrid Forum FAQ

Background:

In April, 2008 Infineon Technologies, Intel, Panasonic and Texas Instruments announced the formation of HomeGrid Forum™. The forum’s objective is to promote a next-generation, single MAC/PHY worldwide standard for networking over home wiring, responding to growing industry need.

Key Messages:

HomeGrid Forum is a companion to ITU-T G.hn, supporting the interests of service providers, consumer electronics manufacturers, PC manufacturers, and other networking companies to create a next generation, single MAC/PHY technology for transporting multimedia across a home's existing coaxial, phone line and powerline wires.

Three workgroups have been established:

  • ITU-T G.hn Contribution workgroup, facilitating technical discussion for papers submitted for G.hn review by HomeGrid Forum member
  • Compliance and Interoperability workgroup, developing a certification program to ensure that HomeGrid logo products will work reliably in customer homes
  • Marketing workgroup, promoting awareness of HomeGrid worldwide

Question and Answer:

Q1: What is HomeGrid's market relevance?
A1: HomeGrid Forum will eliminate market fragmentation by unifying the industry on a single next-generation MAC/PHY technology to be used on coax, phone line and powerline.

Q2: How will HomeGrid achieve that?
A2: HomeGrid Forum members contribute to the standardization process in ITU-T G.hn, with a goal of quickly reaching industry consensus on a next-generation international standard. HomeGrid will also accelerate worldwide adoption of the G.hn standard with a certification program ensuring products in the market work correctly, and by working closely with ITU to promote G.hn.

Q3: What is the ITU-T G.hn effort?
A3: ITU-T G.hn is developing a next generation wired home networking technology that enables transmission of video, audio and data over existing coax, phone line and powerline wires in the home.

Q4: How long has the ITU-T Study Group 15 Question 4 (Q4/15) Rapporteur group been in existence?
A4: Q4/15 has been in existence for more than a decade, and has successfully completed many networking standards, including those supporting the more than 600 million deployed DSL ports worldwide. The G.hn project started in Q4/15 in 2006. 

Q5: When do you anticipate the first products with this new standard to be available?
A5: HomeGrid Forum members are working diligently within ITU-T G.hn to deliver architectural and PHY specifications in 2008, with a goal of final specification in 2009. Individual manufacturers will independently decide when to introduce products based on this standard.

Q6: Is HomeGrid Forum creating a specification?
A6: No--the goal of HomeGrid Forum is to support the development of a specification in ITU-T G.hn. To accomplish this goal, HomeGrid members meet regularly to discuss requirements and technical issues, and develop proposals for G.hn. These proposals are then submitted to G.hn as multi-party contributions from those members that support the proposal and are also ITU-T members. 

Q7: How will consumers benefit from HomeGrid Forum efforts?
A7: HomeGrid Forum will enable higher throughput products from multiple manufacturers, while also significantly reducing cost over time. HomeGrid will utilize existing wires in consumer homes to enable whole-home connectivity, allowing users to share videos, music and images across devices, brands, and physical media. Doing so will allow customers to easily access all the content and resources on their home network—just plug it in and you’re on the network. 

Q8: What’s next for HomeGrid Forum?
A8: HomeGrid Forum continues to recruiting additional members and continues making multi-party contributions to ITU-T G.hn. In additional, marketing and compliance & interoperability programs have been launched, with initial customer testing to begin in 2009.

Q9: What does this mean for other home networking alliances such as today’s coax, powerline, and phone line networking consortia?
A9: Many members of different consortia currently contribute to ITU-T G.hn today. One can expect that many companies today deploying products based on stand alone coax, phone line and powerline networking technologies will eventually offer products certified by HomeGrid Forum.

Q10: Does HomeGrid Forum compete with other industry home networking alliances?
A10: No. HomeGrid Forum supports ITU-T G.hn contributions made by companies that also frequently participate in alliances such as CEPCA, HomePlug Powerline Alliance, MoCA, HPNA, HD-PLC Alliance, and UPA.

Q11:  What is HomeGrid Forum's view regarding backwards compatibility with other home networking technologies?
A11: HomeGrid Forum believes that compatibility with existing technologies is an important criterion for next-generation technology development, and will seek to enable compatibility where practical considerations allow and make commercial sense.

Q12: Will HomeGrid Forum seek association with any other alliances?
A12: HomeGrid Forum has liaison agreements with other industry alliances to facilitate collaboration of ideas and technology transfers.
 
Q13: How does the forum resolve the issue of today’s competing technologies?
A13: HomeGrid Forum members have interests in different home networking technologies, all of which are incompatible with each other today. HomeGrid does not represent the interests of specific companies, but the interests of all companies that seek a single, unified next-generation standard.