HomeGrid aims to help the International Telecommunication Union's G.hn committee deliver a specification for physical layer and media access control chips within a year. They believe the spec could replace separate efforts by groups such as the Multimedia over Coax Alliance, the HomePNA Alliance and the HomePlug Powerline Alliance.

"We are all aware there is a fragmented wired [home networking] market today, and a number of companies would like to get to a common technology," said Matthew Theall, president of HomeGrid and a technology strategist at Intel. "This technology could be embedded in hundreds of millions of products some day," he added.

HomeGrid will host weekly technical work sessions to speed up progress on the ITU effort which conducts face-to-face meetings just once a quarter. In addition, it aims to take on marketing and certification roles to make sure the resulting standard is adopted.

"We believe today's announcement is an important step towards eliminating fragmentation in the industry and achieving the vision of a networked home," said Kurt Scherf, analyst with market watcher Parks Associates, speaking in a prepared statement.

"This is ambitious, but I think its necessary otherwise consumers might face the prospect of home networking products that not only don't interoperate but actually interfere with each other," said Les Brown, chairman of the ITU G.hn group and a senior standards manager for Infineon.

"The ITU is a very powerful group for unifying the industry so we think we have a chance for success," Brown added.

Backers note the ITU helped settle contentious debates on standards such as DSL. "It is challenging, but if any one can do it, it's the ITU," said Barry O'Mahony, a senior staff systems engineer at Intel, working with the G.hn group that got its start in 2006.

It's not clear whether HomeGrid or G.hn has backing from the wide group of chip, system and service companies who drive home networking standards.

About 35 companies now participate in G.hn, said Theall of Intel. They include several powerline network players such as DS2, Intellon and Panasonic as well as CopperGate which designs chips for the HPNA standard.

HomeGrid is just starting to court members broadly. "We expect many of the G.hn members will also join this effort," said Theall.

After the HomeGrid launch we will reach out to more people to create the momentum and critical mass we need," said Imran Hajiumusa, vice president of broadband access at Infineon Technologies North America.

HomeGrid was founded by Infineon, Intel, Panasonic and Texas Instruments. Initial members include Aware Inc., DS2, Gigle Semiconductor, Ikanos, Pulse Link, Sigma Designs and Westell.