"To the best of our knowledge this is the first time that this level of performance has been achieved over existing home wires," said Juan Carlos Riveiro, president and chief executive officer of Gigle, in an email.

In the email Riveiro described the performance "One gigabit class bandwidth," without further clarification.

Venture backed Gigle (Edinburgh, Scotland) was founded in 2005 and has assembled a team of approximately 35 engineers to produce chips compliant with the Homeplug audiovisual connection standard but with extended performance and features. This should allow consumers to share digital content, including movies, television broadcasts, music, online gaming and other information, between multiple pieces of consumer electronics equipment in the home, the company said.

"The test chip contains several key technology blocks that will form part of our first product due in 2008," said Riveiro.

Riveiro described Gigle as providing a universal wireline product applicable to coaxial cable or power of telephone wiring in a "real" single-chip and capable of up to 1-Gbit per second communications.