A group of companies hopes to define by sometime in 2009 a standard for chips that drive gigabit-class networking on coax, phone and power lines. While the ambitious effort could help unify and expand the rapidly emerging but fragmented market for home networks, huge technical and political hurdles lie ahead.

Eleven companies launched the HomeGrid Forum last week. They aim to accelerate and drive to market the work of the International Telecommunication Union's (ITU) G.hn committee to define a standard for physical-layer (PHY) and media-access control chips.

HomeGrid members believe the spec could replace the fragmented efforts by groups such as the Multimedia over Coax Alliance (MoCA), the HomePNA Alliance and the HomePlug Powerline Alliance. HomeGrid founders Infineon, Intel, Panasonic and Texas Instruments have little or no stake in the existing approaches and stand to benefit from a unified standard that accelerates home networking and potentially makes it a commodity.

"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 someday."

HomeGrid will host weekly technical work sessions to speed progress on the ITU effort, which was launched in 2006 and typically conducts work sessions monthly and face-to-face meetings quarterly. In addition, the forum will take on marketing and certification roles to make sure the resulting standard is adopted, much as the Wi-Fi Alliance has done for the IEEE 802.11 specs.

The forum initially invited a handful of core members that agreed to join, including Aware Inc., DS2, Gigle Semiconductor, Ikanos, Pulse-Link, Sigma Designs and Westell. About 35 companies now participate in G.hn, said Theall. They include powerline chip maker Intellon, as well as CopperGate, which designs chips for the HPNA standard.

"We expect many of the G.hn members will also join this effort," he said.

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

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

Supporters note that the ITU helped settle combative 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 who works with the G.hn group.

The ITU drafts standards by agreeing on technology building blocks one at a time. In comparison, the IEEE calls for complete proposals, often generating competing proposals that battle for dominance.

"The ITU is a better forum for this work, because the IEEE is too much of a beauty contest," said Chano Gomez, vice president of technology and strategic partnerships at powerline chip maker DS2, which is locked in a contentious debate over powerline standards in the IEEE 1901 group. "It's more likely that a final ITU standard is one that no one is completely happy with, but that no one gets an [unfair] advantage from."

If successful, the HomeGrid/G.hn effort could encourage consumer electronics and set-top box makers to sprinkle home network links generously across their product lines.

"We haven't seen a lot of CE companies dip their toes into the home networking space, because from their point of view, there's still a lot of uncertainty about all these competing specs," said Kurt Scherf, senior analyst with market watcher Parks Associates. "I think the connected set top could benefit the most from this move."

Parks Associates estimates about 140 million homes worldwide now have some form of basic home network that includes at least a router and access point. It expects that to grow to as many as 240 million homes by 2012.

Today most home networks in the United States use Wi-Fi (53 percent), followed by wired Ethernet (28 percent), according to Parks. MoCA has 10 percent of the market, and the remaining percentage points are split between Powerline (8 percent) and HPNA (1 percent).

Technical and political battles

The G.hn committee has made several technical decisions, especially for its PHY spec, but many issues are still outstanding, particularly regarding the media-access controller (MAC).