HomeGrid Forum and Broadband Forum Announce First Open G.hn Chipset Interoperability Plugfest

BEAVERTON, OR--(Marketwire - May 17, 2011) - Chipset manufacturers will have their first major opportunity to test the interoperability of their products for the new G.hn home networking standard. The event will take place from May 23-27, 2011 and will be hosted at the ITU facilities in Geneva, Switzerland. The G.hn Chipset Interoperability Plugfest is a joint effort by the HomeGrid Forum and the Broadband Forum, and is being facilitated by the University of New Hampshire InterOperability Laboratory (UNH-IOL).

"As one of the world's leading organizations for broadband best practices and technology evolution, we are pleased to be able to co-host the first G.hn chipset open interoperability event. This is a very important step on the road to bringing G.hn products to the market and represents a significant milestone for service providers planning to deploy G.hn," said Robin Mersh, CEO of the Broadband Forum.

This G.hn open interoperability event represents a major advance in the efforts of the industry as it is the first of its kind. Together, HomeGrid Forum, Broadband Forum and ITU are taking a major step forward to accelerate the delivery of G.hn technology to the marketplace. Members of the Broadband Forum and HomeGrid Forum will be able to submit their chipsets for interoperability testing against the Interoperability Test Plan, which defines a suite of physical-layer and data-link-layer interoperability tests for G.hn.

"The ITU supports this event and we believe this represents a significant milestone in the world's service providers aligning around G.hn," said Malcolm Johnson, Director of the ITU Telecommunication Standardization Bureau from ITU. "A multi-vendor silicon interoperability event furthers the technology, and with the support of the Broadband Forum and HomeGrid Forum members, we are working with important players that will be deploying this technology in the near future."

The ITU developed G.hn as the first global home networking standard created to unify home networking services and devices over any wire, including coaxial cable, phone lines and power lines. The Plugfest is driven by vendor interest and the industry's desire to test first silicon and demonstrate G.hn's market potential. The specific goals of this first G.hn plugfest are to perform initial tests for interoperability and compliance of chipsets from a number of vendors, validate the test suite and act as a prelude to the launch of HomeGrid's formal Compliance and Interoperability program. Multiple G.hn chipset vendors are expected to participate.

President of HomeGrid Forum Matt Theall said, "We are excited by the speed with which the industry is moving forward with developing products for the G.hn standard. Chip vendors have really pushed forward with this and the interoperability testing will pave the way for real progress in getting devices to market."

Chipset vendors who are members of Broadband Forum and/or HomeGrid Forum and are interested in joining the Plugfest can register at http://www.iol.unh.edu/services/testing/ghn/grouptest/may_02_2011gtp/.

For more information please contact:

Brian Dolby on +44 7899 914168 or Sheila Lashford on +44 7986 514240 or email pr@homegridforum.org

About the Broadband Forum
Broadband Forum, a non-profit industry organization made up of service providers, equipment vendors and other interested parties, is focused on engineering smarter and faster broadband connections. Our work defines best practices for global networks, enables service and content delivery, establishes technology migration strategies, engineers critical device & service management tools, and is key to redefining broadband. Our free technical reports and white papers can be found at www.broadband-forum.org

About HomeGrid Forum
HomeGrid Forum is a global, non-profit trade group promoting the International Telecommunication Union's G.hn and G.hnem standardization efforts for next-generation home networking and SmartGrid Applications. HomeGrid Forum promotes adoption of G.hn and G.hnem through technical and marketing efforts, addresses certification and interoperability of G.hn and G.hnem-compliant products, and cooperates with complementary industry alliances. For more information on HomeGrid Forum, please visit www.homegridforum.org or follow us on http://twitter.com/homegrid_forum.