China Telecom Shanghai Research Institute joined HomeGrid Forum as its newest promoter member earlier this month. It is the major research organization under China Telecom Corporation, and has worked on G.hn related projects for more than three years.
China Telecom Shanghai Research Institute joined HomeGrid Forum as its newest promoter member earlier this month. It is the major research organization under China Telecom Corporation, and has worked on G.hn related projects for more than three years. The join of China Telecom Shanghai Research Institute is believed to help dominating HomeGrid Forum’s prominent presence in Asia.
HomeGrid Forum believes that every smart home requires robust high-speed backbone, and G.hn is the optimal choice that focuses on not only low-speed applications, “Smart home should actually have everything connected, including both high-speed and low-speed applications,” stated Donna Yasay, President of HomeGrid Forum.
Wireless technologies are easy to use, but the frequency resources are scarce, so wireless signals are always a problem covering the whole house. Therefore a hybrid home mesh network, which applies G.hn for backbone and wireless technologies for applications, will guarantee the accessibility of high-speed network throughout the home while wireless APs or hubs can be placed wherever they fit.
Awareness, the priority
China Telecom Shanghai Research Institute is the main driver for China Telecom’s technology innovation. By joining HomeGrid Forum, it is a clear signal that G.hn is being adopted by China Telecom as the only wired home networking standard in the booming market. They believed that this can effectively encourage service providers to select G.hn as their home networking standard.
Though being confident in Chinese market, the low user awareness is still a challenge in promoting G.hn for HomeGrid Forum. In homes where Ethernet cables are not available, end customers have issues using IPTV services and poor Wi-Fi coverage because of poor wall penetration of the wireless signal. The G.hn technology allows reusing existing wires to easily remove obstacles; yet people don’t know that such solutions exist. “End users are generally not aware of the convenient home networking solution which G.hn can provide. Therefore it will be very important for service providers to educate why the G.hn technology is superior and user friendly,” explained Yasay.
Deploying all over the globe
Apart from China, HomeGrid Forum has already deployed in North America in Retail and Service Providers. They cooperated with Bell Canada specifically for consumer 4K TV on powerline, DirecTV and Centurylink business customers on Coax. In Europe, they work with Liberty Global leading the consumer efforts on powerline and powerline to wireless for MSO’s. Therefore, it is significant that China Telecom is leading the charge in service provider deployments for Consumer Asia in both Coax and Powerline.
The roadmap of G.hn involves higher bandwidth and better flexibility. The demand for higher data rate is always there, and therefore in the future G.hn will utilize more frequency range and provide higher throughput. In addition, G.hn will explore new ways for better integration with other technologies. “In our vision of a hybrid home mesh, G.hn will become the transparent backbone uniting all devices and technologies,” concluded Yasay.