Lost in the media swirl around Sigma Designs’ acquisition of home networking chipmaker (and Rainier client) Coppergate is the exciting news that last week the ITU-T approved the key Physical Layer and architecture components of the G.hn home networking specification. The holy grail of home networking, a unified standard that drives broadband content over “everywire,” is now one step closer to becoming a commercial reality.

With the ITU-T approval, the G.hn standard is now deemed stable enough to allow silicon manufacturers like Coppergate to move forward with their development programs and bring products to market.

The approval marks another step in the steady adoption of G.hn and reaffirms a longstanding desire to unite a fragmented industry which currently uses a variety of incompatible technologies that typically address only single types of household wiring options – coax, phone line, or power line.

Having played in the home networking silicon market since the 1990s when we launched Enikia, and having worked with HomePLUG, as well, we’ve had a front row seat to a decade of wrangling over home networking standards. I’m as excited as the next guy (well, as the next guy who cares about such things) to see G.hn coming closer to fruition.

Imagine when connectivity and content routing inside our homes becomes as easy as electricity is today.

Steve Schuster Uncategorized embedded systems, G.hn, home networking, homepna, public relations, semiconductors, technology, telecom