Stuart Corner
Monday, 30 October 2006 10:46
Opinion and Analysis
Page 1 of 2
There's a bit of a battle at the moment between suppliers of broadband over powerline (BPL) gear and of wireless lan technology for the deliver of video signals around the home.
Suppliers of both technologies are chasing carriers that are offering or planning to offer IP video services to their customers. All such carriers have a problem: their service comes into the home at one point which might not be where the customer wants to watch TV and that customer might want to watch TV in several different places in the home at the same time.. So some means is needed to get the signal from one room to another.
Running cat5 cable around the house is one option but it is neither cheap nor particularly appealing to customers. Hence the appeal of BPL and wireless. And as iTWire reported recently, at least one carrier, Belgacom, is
having a bet each way: buying BPL gear from Corinex and wireless gear from Ruckus Wireless.
According to ABI Research, WiFi technologies are dominant, but not having things all their own way. "Multimedia over Coax (MoCA), Home Phone Networking Alliance (HPNA 3.0), and HomePlug [both BPL technologies] will collectively see 45 million total connections on set-top box and residential gateways shipped in 2011.
According to ABI's research director, Michael Wolf, "The slow road towards finalisation of 802.11n and the lack of comfort among many video service providers about wireless have opened the doors for these alternatives. Verizon's choice of MoCA and AT&T's adoption of HPNA 3.0 show a market today split between various technologies." Verizon's choice of MoCA and AT&T's adoption of HPNA 3.0 show a market today split between various technologies.
"Our research into this topic suggests that among the three technologies (MoCA, HPNA 3.0, and HomePlug AV), MoCA will lead in overall connections due to strong uptake in North America among IPTV and cable providers," says Wolf.
However while MoCA might be good in North America where co-ax cabling for pay TV is well established, it will be no help where homes are not already cabled with coax runs.
