Broadcom gets Gigle in home networking acquisition

Semiconductor firm Broadcom has agreed to acquire fellow chip company Gigle Networks for $75 million in cash--a deal that will have implications in the rapidly consolidating powerline home networking segment, as well as affecting the broader push toward home G.hn standard home networking.

Gigle, a privately-held company based in Barcelona, Spain, is a member of the HomePlug Powerline Alliance, which promotes the HomePlug AV specification for home networking. However, the company also has been working in the G.hn arena and should help speed Broadcom’s advances into both of these segments.

Broadcom will look to incorporate Gigle’s HomePlug chips, which are also IEEE 1901-compliant, into set-top boxes, routers and residential gateways manufactured by its equipment vendor partners.

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Spain prefers Analog TV

One and a half years before the analogue switch-off, scheduled for April 2010, Spaniards seem to be not very keen on DTT as most of them, 61.4 percent, still prefer to watch analogue TV, according to the latest viewing figures.

DTT got an average share of 17.4 percent in September, a record figure in its history but still very low in comparison with the allegedly high DTT take-up, with 37.4 percent of Spanish homes already enjoying DTT (of which 32.4 percent have an IDTV), according to the National Institute of Statistics (INE).

According to INE, TV penetration reaches 99.7 percent, with 21.4 percent receiving TV through satellite, 15 percent through cable and 4.6 percent via IPTV. INE's latest report also reveals that 51 percent of Spanish homes have access to the Internet, of which 43.5 percent (almost 6.6 million homes) through broadband via ADSL (67.9 percent) or cable (14.8 percent).