Digital dream home all set for 2010 with new networking specs
With the agreement by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) to set a new global standard for the fully networked home, the dream of the digital household inches closer. The ITU has piloted the first global standard that offers an in-home, high-speed network that is capable of delivering room-to-room HDTV.
The standard, to be called G.hn, promises high quality multimedia over power, coaxial, phone and other home network wiring and will offer up to 20 times the throughput of existing wired technologies and thrice that of wired technologies.
The standard isn’t some distant future-gazing prospect either and compliant products could hit the market as early as 2010. G.hn specifications will be used by chip manufacturers to build transceivers that can be incorporated into set top boxes, residential gateways, home computers, audio systems, DVD players, televisions and any other devices that might be connected to the network now or in the future.
“Service operators have been looking for an international standard that encompasses multiple existing-wire mediums for video distribution,” says Joyce Putscher, principal analyst, at analyst firm In-Stat. “G.hn meets that requirement and it seems clear that with significant industry backing from service providers, semiconductor and equipment vendors, and the fast rate at which the process is moving to achieve a standard we will see first equipment by 2010.”
Such speedy realisation of G.hn technologies will be supported by the Home Grid Forum which has been formed to back G.hn. The Forum’s goal is to market G.hn worldwide and to create compliance and interoperability programmes to ensure that products will operate in any home in the world. If all goes to plan users could be enjoying the fully networked home anywhere in the world within eighteen months.
I've been writing about technology for nearly 20 years, including editing industry magazines Connect and Communications International. In 2002 I co-founded Futurity Media with Anthony Plewes. My focus in Futurity Media is in emerging technologies, social media and future gazing. As a graduate of philosophy & science, I have studied futurology & foresight to the post-grad level.