The IPTV battle enters the home

The battle of in-home distribution technologies for IPTV continued unabated at this month's Telco TV conference and expo in Dallas. The industry may be getting used to the likelihood that there won't be a single in-home wiring standard, but the groups behind each of the technology alternatives aren't necessarily down-shifting their campaigns.

The Multimedia over Coax Alliance (MoCA), the HomePNA Alliance and the HomePlug Alliance each delivered membership updates at the show, as well as evidence that their respective technologies are becoming more broadly accepted. Meanwhile, Ruckus Wireless, the vendor that seems to be single-handedly forcing wireless technology into the in-home wiring debate, hosted a panel called “IPTV Over Wi-Fi: Concept to Reality.”

First off, MoCA, which seeks to leverage existing coaxial cable deployed in 70% of U.S. homes to deliver up to 270 Mb/s of bandwidth, announced at the show that 1 million MoCA nodes have been deployed thus far. Verizon has been the most visible carrier supporter of the technology as part of its FiOS IPTV rollout, and vendors including 2Wire, Actiontec, Motorola, Mototech, Panasonic, Tellabs have put the technology into a variety of home networking products.

“The announcement by MoCA that one million nodes are now deployed is impressive by itself, but if you look at the variety of devices that are included, the momentum looks very powerful,” said David Foote, chief technology officer for Hitachi Telecom, which announced a MoCA-enabled Gigabit passive optical networking product at the show.

MoCA also announced that it had added Texas Instruments as a new member.

Meanwhile, HomePNA announced the release of HomePNA 33.1, which boosts the bandwidth rate over existing copper or coaxial wiring to 320 Mb/s. The announcement came just weeks after AT&T announced that it was using the group's previous HomePNA 3.0 specification as the home wiring solution for its U-verse triple-play offering.

“With up to 320 Mb/s data rates, HomePNA home networks can accommodate the future bandwidth requirements of service providers as they enhance their offerings with additional features and capabilities,” said Tom Starr, chairperson of the HomePNA technical committee.

HomePNA 3.1 adds VDSL spectrum coexistence to the ADSL, POTS and broadcast TV channel spectrum coexistence provided by the HomePNA 3.0 specification. Multi-spectrum operation also allows multiple HomePNA networks to coexist on the same wiring.

In terms of new membership additions, HomePNA brought on Allied Telesis Labs, Amedia Networks, Conexant, Fluke Networks and JDSU.

The HomePlug Alliance added Texas Instruments to its Implementers Board and also added LG Electronics and TV manufacturer TCL to its board of directors.

But wireless won't be left out of the in-home wiring equation. After getting an equity investment last month from Motorola, Ruckus Wireless took TelcoTV by storm. In the “IPTV Over Wi-Fi” panel, Ruckus customer Pioneer Telephone Cooperative of Kingfisher, Okla., testified to using the vendor's 802.11b/g router to support flexible IPTV distribution in the home. Scott Ulsaker, Pioneer director of operations, told Telephony before this year's TelcoTV show that he actually came across Ruckus and the IPTV-over-Wi-Fi concept at the TelcoTV event in 2005.

Ulsaker said Pioneer initially tested the technology on 25 friendly trial homes, including his own, and later expanded the trial to 80 homes. “I had concerns about how it would deal with interference, but we've thrown everything you can think of at it, and it's done very well,” he said.

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IN-HOME WIRING FOR IPTV

TECHNOLOGY	MAX THEORETICAL DATA RATE
Multimedia over coaxial cable (MoCA)	270 Mb/s
HomePNA	320 Mb/s
HomePlug A/V	200 Mb/s
Wi-Fi 802.11b/g	108 Mb/s
Wi-Fi 802.11n	540 Mb/s