HGI Expands Portfolio with New Ecodesign and Multi Session Support Documents

The Home Gateway Initiative (HGI) announced the ratification of two key documents focusing on ecodesign in home networking and home gateway traffic management.

The first document helps to further enhance HGI’s energy efficiency portfolio of work and is a big step towards bringing ecodesign to home networking by facilitating energy efficient, reusable power supplies.

The document is part of the HGI’s Release 3 specification family and has been produced by the HGI’s Energy Efficiency Task Force. The document has already been liaised to ETSI where it will form the basis of a new European series of standards. HGI’s work is also expected to directly influence work in this area at the ITU-T and IEC.

The second document sets technical requirements that will increase the reliability of the home gateway when handling some types of data traffic.

Founded in 2004, HGI is the world’s leading member-led organization devoted to translating broadband service providers’ service plans into published technology requirements for home enablers.

For more information, click here.

HGI announces partnership agreement with Broadband Forum

The Home Gateway Initiative (HGI) announced that it has signed a liaison agreement with the Broadband Forum that will lead to close collaboration by both organizations on the development of standards and specifications for broadband networks worldwide.

The comprehensive agreement is designed to enhance the already active cooperation between HGI and the Broadband Forum. It allows each organization to provide input, and to release copyright on work-in-progress specifications to the partner organization as working documents are drafted. The result will be acceleration and strong alignment of key specification work within the industry that leads to improvements in the capabilities of customers’ broadband networks.

The areas of cooperation by these two groups will be centered on architectural and functional requirements for customer located broadband equipment. HGI’s mission to solve the service, feature and technology challenges in the digital home complements the Broadband Forum’s core competencies in end-to-end architecture and management. The groups agreed to cooperate in addressing quality of service (QoS), software modularity, IPv6, energy efficiency and testing.

Both groups will meet regularly to discuss projects and priorities for industry standards in these and other areas. Both organizations bring a unique focus on a set of related problems, and are stronger by working together.

By jointly identifying goals, sharing work in progress, and avoiding duplication of efforts, our member companies receive better value for their investments of resources in our respective efforts. The industry has important issues to solve, and this agreement helps significantly.”

Together, the two groups represent over 200 companies, and over 30 service providers, including Arcor, AT&T, Belgacom, Bell, BT, Cable & Wireless, China Telecom, China Unicom, Chunghwa Telecom, Deutsche Telekom, Embarq, Fastweb, France Telecom, KDDI, KPN, KT, Magyar Telecom, NTT, OTE, Portugal Telecom, Qwest, SingTel, Swisscom, Telecom Italia, Tata Teleservices Ltd, TDC, Telecom Slovenije, Telecom New Zealand, Telefonica, Telekomunikacja Polska, Telekom Austria, Telekom Malaysia, Telenor, TeliaSonera, Telkom SA, Telstra, Telus and Verizon.

Wrapping it Up – Predictions for the Next Five Years, CONN EU panel

Parks Associates wraps up CONNECTIONS™ Europe Summit with a recap of key findings on the last panel, Wrapping it Up – Predictions for the Next Five Years . Parks Associates provides perspectives and predictions for five key digital lifestyles markets in Europe:

• Broadcast and entertainment services

• Communications and broadband services

• Home networking

• Home monitoring and green-living technologies

• Device management and support services

Speakers include:

Fabrizio Caffarelli, CEO, TVBLOB
Philippe Calvet, Head of Home & Broadband Networks Standards in Orange Strategy & Development group, Orange/France Telecom; Head of Business Group & Board Member, HGI
Bill Correll, VP, Marketing & Business Development, Eyecon Technologies
Trond Neergaard, Founder and Managing Partner, Cloudberry Associates; Member of CTAM Europe Board
Paolo Pastorino, Business Development and Marketing Manager, Loquendo
Stuart Sikes, President, Parks Associates
Kurt Scherf, Vice President, Principal Analyst, Parks Associates

OSGi Alliance & HGI Collaborate to Boost Broadband Provider Flexibility & Service Offerings

The OSGi Alliance and the Home Gateway Initiative (HGI) announced a partnership agreement that will enable broadband service providers to offer more flexible applications to residential customers. Under this agreement, the partners will work together to integrate the OSGi Service Platform into the home gateway, creating a software execution environment that will facilitate the deployment of new service capabilities into the digital home.

The home gateway (HG) plays a central role in the digital home, interconnecting computers, devices on the home network, and the Internet, all while supporting Quality of Service and remote management. Service providers are increasingly looking to deliver HG-based consumer services such as energy management, media server, and home network diagnostics. Pairing the dynamic and modular OSGi technology with HG-specific Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) and protocols will greatly extend the service capabilities of the home gateway.

The OSGi Alliance and the HGI will develop the software execution environment for Home Gateways within the context of established concepts, standards, and technologies in the home gateway and software/middleware markets. To implement the agreement, members of the organizations’ OSGi Residential Expert Group and HGI Software Execution Environment Task Force will align requirements and specifications, timetables and roadmaps, and identify other organizations and technologies which should be involved.

HGI to host its 1st Test Event

The first ever test event to assess Quality of Service (QoS) and Multi-session support in both Home Gateway products and reference designs is to be held by the Home Gateway Initiative (HGI) in France next month.

The HGI Test Event builds upon two key pieces of technical work within HGI. The first is the QoS architecture, fully described in the recently published QoS White Paper, HGI-GD013-R2. The second is HGI’s Requirements for Multiple Flows, currently an HGI working draft document (HGI-RWD010-R3).

The event, which will run from September 28 to October 2 in Lannion (Brittany, France), will enable each vendor to choose the tests that they wish to participate in. Each participating vendor is allocated an entire day to complete the tests with the assistance of the host lab personnel. Test results will be reviewed and validated between the vendor and the HGI auditing team. Vendors will be free to publish their validated test results, and/or share them with Service Providers, whilst the HGI management committee will publish an anonymous summary of the test results.

The HGI, founded in 2004 by nine telecom operators, is shaping the next generation of internet and voice services. Starting from use-cases and service needs, the HGI sets requirements for Home Gateways, infrastructure devices, and the home network. The HGI now has members from across the globe, representing the entire spectrum of players in the broadband home area.

For further information, please visit www.homegatewayinitiative.org.

HGI Adds Arcor to Growing Membership

The Home Gateway Initiative (HGI), the industry body representing players in the home networking space, announced the addition of Arcor to its operator members. As Germany’s second largest telecom operator, Arcor offers voice and broadband services over ISDN and IP networks to over three million users.

The current list of operators includes Belgacom, BT, Deutsche Telekom, Fastweb, France Telecom, KDDI, KPN, NTT, Portugal Telecom, Swisscom, Telecom Italia, Telefonica, Telecom Slovenije, Telekomunikacja Polska, Telenor, TeliaSonera and Telstra. The main tasks of the HGI are to establish home gateway-related technical and interoperability specifications and provide input to standardisation bodies.

Other recent HGI members include Comtrend, a supplier of advanced networking solutions; D-Link, a manufacturer of communications solutions for the digital home and Small Office/Home Office (SOHO); Ikanos Communications, a provider of advanced broadband semiconductor and software products for the digital home; Mitsubishi Electric, a manufacturer of communications equipment; Sercomm, a developer of wireless and IP network products; and Soft At Home, a software company providing operating platforms for the digital home environment.

The HGI was founded and launched by nine telecom operators (Belgacom, BT, Deutsche Telekom, France Telecom, KPN, TeliaSonera, NTT, Telefonica and Telecom Italia) in 2004, and now has members from five continents, representing the spectrum of actors in the broadband home arena.

For further information, please visit http://www.homegatewayinitiative.org/

HGI is a supporting organization of the 2009 CONNECTIONS(TM) events.

Digital Home Tech Services: New Areas for Customer Support

Stay ahead of the curve on new technologies and consumer trends - attend the CONNECTIONS Europe Summit in Nice, France on March 31, 2009.

Multiple companies are starting to realize the vast market opportunities for customer support services in Europe. To succeed, carriers, manufacturers, and retailers must contend with multiple factors, including the linguistic and regional differences among European countries, to avoid unnecessary expenses – and develop the right support solutions to capitalize on this new service area. This panel discusses consumer demand and the potential revenue opportunities for customer support solutions, from installation to troubleshooting to service plans.

Confirmed speakers for the panel, Digital Home Tech Services: New Areas for Customer Support:

Milan Erbes, Ambassador, HGI; Standardization & Business Development Manager, DS2
Gil Eyal, CEO, Enure Networks
Peter Galyas, CTO, Tilgin
Art Lancaster, CTO, Affinegy
Bill Stanley, Director, Operations Solutions, Telcordia

HGI SWITCHES ON TO EUROPEAN ENERGY SAVING REGULATIONS

The European Commission (EC) has included recommendations from the Home Gateway Initiative (HGI) for version three of the Code of Conduct on energy consumption of broadband equipment. The latest version of the Code of Conduct was published on November 24th 2008.

The HGI is the leading industry voice in defining home gateways, and has been a major contributor to the Code of Conduct in this area. The work has involved defining the operation states of Customer Premises Equipment, as well as providing targets for the power consumption values of each functional component of the home gateway.

In line with the recommendations made, the HGI is now working on specifying low power mechanisms that allow the home gateway to consume the minimum power corresponding to its current level of activity, by looking at the individual subcomponents and assessing the existing power modes, and evaluating the implementation of additional low power modes. The work of the HGI on energy efficiency also extends deeper into the home network, involving the home gateway’s unique role as an always on device, orchestrating home automation.

The HGI was founded and launched by nine telecom operators (Belgacom, BT, Deutsche Telekom, France Telecom, KPN, TeliaSonera, NTT, Telefonica and Telecom Italia) in 2004, and now has members from five continents, representing the entire spectrum of actors in the broadband home arena. The main tasks of the HGI are to establish home gateway-related technical and interoperability specifications and provide input to standardisation bodies.

For further information, please visit www.homegatewayinitiative.org.

Recaping the RESIDENTIAL GATEWAYS - Devices Enabling New Services panel at CONNECTIONS Berlin

Kurt Scherf began this session by describing the market landscape of service provider competition in Europe and the rise of the residential gateway and value-added services as key competitive differentiators:

• Aggressive local loop unbundling in Europe means that service providers are no longer safe from intense competition behind their own borders.
• Parks Associates’ analysis of the value-added services market indicates that pragmatic services and features will be more popular with subscribers in the early stages. For example, solutions aimed at home IT management, storage, and converged voice services (FMC/femtocell) will be deployed in larger numbers in early stages. The residential gateway will sit at the heart of these services, providing a platform for converged and managed services.
• Parks Associates is forecasting that households with residential gateways will grow from 26 million at the end of 2008 to more than 70 million by the end of 2012. European households will account for more than 60% of deployments in 2008, and it will still be the largest market in 2012.
• Residential gateway features will evolve to include home networking, converged voice services, media transcoding/transrating, and storage.

The panelists each introduced themselves:

• Hans-Joerg Kolbe, Senior Researcher, NEC Europe: NEC runs research labs in Heidelberg, Bonn/St. Augustin. Their work includes security, networking and service-related products. The home gateway is the service origination point for the home and its responsibilities can include media management and voice services. As the RG migrates to a femtocell access point, it can allow mobile devices to become home control devices. Quality of service is an important part of RG function. Can support IMS.
• Christer Larsson, CEO, Makewave AB / OSGi Alliance: OSGi develops standards to manage the lifecyle of RGs. Ebox system was an independent platform to load services and software apps directly. Christer indicates that most OSGi development and deployment is coming from Asia, including Japan and India.
• Klaus Milczewsky, Senior Manager for Innovation Management, Technology Management Products & Innovation, Home Gateway Initiative / Deutsche Telekom. Klaus indicates that the RG is serving an important entertainment-centric function, and keys to its success are that it is simple, easy-to-use, and cost-effective for the service provider to deploy. The focus of the Home Gateway Initiative is to leverage existing standards and to fill application holes. Key to future development of HGi specifications will be to work with organizations such as DLNA and to focus on the future functionality of the RG.
• Frederic Onado, Vice President EMEA, HomePlug Powerline Alliance; Vice President, Marketing & Sales, SPiDCOM Technologies: HomePlug – covers chips to service providers, HomePlug A/V compliance standard will be released next year. SPiDCOM chairs HP Europe. Involved with many other service bodies. OMEGA project is to provide new connectivity in the home – wireless optical transmission.
• Jim Wallace, Director, Emerging & Home, Segment Marketing, ARM: A common processor at the heart of digital home. There are an average of two ARM processors shipped for every person in the world! Processor power for HD streams. Video drives demand for almost unlimited bandwidth – ARM architecture designed to account. Software complexity growing exponentially.

The question and answer session focused on the key benefits of RGs to the service providers and future applications that we can expect to see.

What data shows that HGs benefit service providers?

• Deutsche Telekom / HGI – opportunity to offer features that customers desire – network management and config are key features.
• HomePlug Alliance/ SPiDCOM Technologies – reduces return rates by several percentage points.
• NEC Europe – cannot function without it – it enables offer of voice services over IP, must have these platforms to keep cable from displacing telcos.

Does RG make the relationship with consumer stickier?

• Not yet enough data.
• Makewave AB / OSGi Alliance– the strength is VAS. Services are table stakes – so RG can reduce expenses for required services.
• NEC Europe – looking to protect consumer from VoIP spam. SPIT is spam over IT Telephony.

HGI PUTS ENERGY SAVING ON THE AGENDA

The Home Gateway Initiative (HGI) has announced that it will be working towards a set of specifications that will outline energy saving solutions for the home gateway. Representatives of the industry body’s worldwide member companies will gather at HGI’s 13th quarterly meeting, in Florence, Italy, where the topic will be high on the agenda.

The HGI will be basing its specifications on the EU Code of Conduct on Energy Consumption of Broadband Equipment, which sets out the basic principles to be followed by all parties involved in broadband equipment, operating in the European Community, in respect of energy efficient equipment. As usual, the HGI will be working closely with Standard Developing Organizations, including ITU-T and ETSI (TISPAN and AT-TM), who are already working on this important item.

The HGI has several objectives that will be addressed during the meeting. Top of the agenda is for the HGI to determine the requirements for an energy efficient home gateway; to establish service modes; mapping the ‘service modes’ into ‘operation modes’ and estimating the actual realistic energy consumption corresponding to these modes; and expanding on the EU Code of Conduct for home gateway specific functions.

The HGI was founded and launched by nine telecom operators (Belgacom, BT, Deutsche Telekom, France Telecom, KPN, TeliaSonera, NTT, Telefonica and Telecom Italia) in 2004, and now has members from five continents, representing the entire spectrum of actors in the broadband home arena. The main tasks of the HGI are to establish home gateway-related technical and interoperability specifications and provide input to standardisation bodies.

Representing HGI at the CONNECTIONS(TM) Conference, Milan Erbes will be speaking on the SOLUTIONS FOR BROADBAND PROVIDERS panel on Thursday, June 26th at 2:15 PM. Other confirmed speakers for this panel include: Yoav Tzruya, CMO, Exent Technologies and David Haadsma, President and CEO, Bsecure Technologies.