HomePlug AV-interoperability Provides Seamless Roadmap for Intellon Customers
Intellon Corporation, a leading provider of HomePlug®-compatible integrated circuits (ICs) for home networking, networked entertainment, Ethernet-over-Coax (EoC) and smart grid applications, announced that its HomePlug AV-based powerline communications chipsets are fully interoperable with the IEEE’s newly approved 1901 Draft Standard and future products designed to the standard. The 1901 Draft Standard, which includes HomePlug AV technology as a key element, was confirmed with supermajority support last week in Tokyo.
The draft standard includes technology requirements and contributions from a wide variety of industry stakeholders including product vendors, service providers, utility companies and technology integrators. In addition to this broad industry support, the draft standard employs robust, mature and carrier-proven technology that will interoperate with the millions of HomePlug AV-based products already deployed across the globe. The combination of this broad industry support and interoperability with HomePlug AV provides customers with the assurance of a seamless pathway to a global IEEE standard while maintaining backwards compatibility with the large and growing installed base of HomePlug AV products.
"This confirmation is a pivotal milestone for the HomePlug Alliance and, indeed the entire powerline communications industry," said Rob Ranck, president of the HomePlug Powerline Alliance. "The confirmation of an official IEEE 1901 Draft Standard moves us closer to a final, ubiquitous IEEE standard, now expected to be complete in the first half of 2010. This creates a major inflection point for accelerating the market and initiates rapid unification on a standard technology platform. HomePlug will be providing C&I testing and certification for 1901-based powerline products.”
“Global standards from international standards development organizations unify our industry and accelerate the development, adoption and use of fast and reliable powerline communications products for digital home, smart grid and commercial and industrial applications,” said Charlie Harris, Chairman and CEO of Intellon Corporation. “The broad support for the IEEE 1901 Draft Standard demonstrates the importance that the industry places on having a global standard that is backwards compatible with HomePlug AV.”
HomePlug AV, HomePlug GP, and IEEE 1901 are included in the Smart Grid Interoperability Standards Interim Roadmap report published by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in June 2009, providing further evidence of the broad industry interest in powerline communications based on HomePlug and IEEE standards. This is in addition to HomePlug technology’s success in the service provider and retail home networking markets.
Intellon has a long history of supporting and implementing global standards efforts, shipping over 38 million total powerline communications ICs based on HomePlug, EIA, SAE and TIA standards, including over 30 million HomePlug-based ICs. Today, 50 service providers use Intellon HomePlug ICs, with customer deployments over coax wiring and phone lines as well as powerlines. As Intellon ICs are designed to optimize communications over the challenging powerline environment, they typically provide even higher bandwidth when operating over cleaner coax and phone wiring. Intellon invented the powerline communications technology upon which the HomePlug 1.0 standard was based and was a significant contributor to the HomePlug AV standard and the IEEE 1901 Draft Standard. Intellon is also an active contributor to the proposed ITU G.hn anywire standard.
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