Fruitless battle of proprietary home-networking tech nears end

In my May 27 post, I mention that the lack of standardization has inhibited the uptake of home-networking technology. More precisely, there have been too many “standards.” Wireless, thankfully, has converged on 802.11 and is more than a home-networking standard. We can now forget about HiperLAN and HomeRF. UWB is all but dead, done in partially by a standards battle. InfraRed is a long forgotten wireless alternative. The standardization of technology reusing coaxial TV cable, telephone wires, or powerline remains a mess.

Historically, a single company has developed a technology using these media and formed an industry group around it. If a group for the particular media already exists, then the company may join the group and market its solution as the next-generation of that group’s technology, even there is no connection or compatibility with earlier generations. Groups include the Multimedia over Coax Alliance (Moca), the HomePNA (fka the Home Phoneline Networking Alliance) the HomePlug Powerline Alliance, and the Universal Powerline Alliance (UPA). Entropic is the sole supplier of Moca chips, but Broadcom is integrating Moca interfaces into its gateway and set-top box chips. CopperGate is the sole company shipping HomePNA Version 3 chips. Intellon anchors HomePlug, and DS2 is behind UPA. Panasonic has its own variety of powerline networking as well. Companies use the imprimatur of the industry group to make it sound like they are conforming to a standard, but each technology is in practice vendor-proprietary—ensuring good margins because of a lack of competition but limiting customer acceptance.

There are two efforts abreast to change the situation. The most promising of the two is the G.hn spec being developed under the auspices of the ITU. The developers of this spec made two sage decisions. The first is to converge on a single interface-regime for all three media: coax, phoneline, and powerline. The goal is to separate the network from the media, eliminating Layer-Two bridges and simplifying vendors’ efforts to design chips for each media. The second is to jettison backward compatibility from the spec. Vendors are free to add backward compatibility, but it is not required. Because home-networking technologies have been poorly adopted (compared with Wi-Fi, for example), the installed base is relatively small. Vendors are likely to build in backward compatibility to provide existing customers, who are mainly carriers, with an upgrade path. The G.hn spec was completed in December 2008 and is likely to be ratified by this time next year.

The other effort is the IEEE P1901 group. This group is taking the opposite tack, focusing on powerline networking only and providing backward compatibility of sorts. P1901 allows the use of one of three PHYs: one derived from HomePlug AV, one derived from Panasonic’s HD-PLC technology, and G.hn. Supporting three options, P1901 does nothing to create a standard. Instead it applies the imprimatur of the IEEE, an organization that is supposed to be a standards body, to the current chaos.

G.hn is likely to emerge the victor for powerline and phoneline networking. Telcos tend to favor ITU specs, and G.hn has the support of AT&T and BT, which is on the board of the group promoting G.hn, the Home Grid Forum. U.S. retailer Best Buy is on the board. The coaxial option of G.hn is likely to be used only as a backup option by telcos on an installation-by-installation basis. Demonstrating that technology can flourish without a real standard behind it, Moca is likely to prevail as the leading coax technology. Moca has the support of the U.S. cable operators and a large customer, Verizon, that has gotten it off the ground.

The chip suppliers best positioned for G.hn are the ones with experience in powerline networking because of the difficulty in taming the media. These vendors include DS2 and CopperGate, which acquired the powerline group of Conexant in 2008. Intellon, the market leader in powerline networking, would be better positioned if it weren’t devoting effort to the P1901 group.

Moca is a two-horse race. Entropic owns the market, and its chips are used in every set-top box and home gateway supporting Moca. Broadcom acquired Moca startup Octalica and has worked over the past two years to bring this technology to market, integrating it with its gateway and set-top box chips. The leading supplier of set-top-box, cable modem, and home-router chips, Broadcom is in a position to steal the lion’s share of the market from Entropic once its Moca technology is proven.

For the sake of the chip vendors, I hope the coalescing of the market around G.hn and Moca will expand the market. Home-networking technology will become both something used by service providers and widely available in different types of equipment at retail stores. Broad acceptance will lead to scale economies, making it inexpensive for digital picture frames, speakers, and TV displays to connect to the home network and the Internet. --Joe

Joseph Byrne, senior analyst