The International Telecommunication Union (ITU-T) has successfully agreed upon the key components of the G.hn specification at its meeting held at the United Nations in Geneva. ITU-T will publish an Approved G.hn Recommendation for the Physical Layer (PHY) and architecture portion of the standard. Also, Recommendation G.9972 achieved consent, allowing coexistence between G.hn products and other wireline networking standards. In addition, the Data Link Layer (DLL) portion of the G.hn standard was deemed stable and is expected to reach consent at the January 2010 ITU-T meeting. Through one worldwide standard, G.hn will unify the networking of content to devices over any wire – coax cable, phone line, and power line.
This standard is now stable enough to allow silicon manufacturers to confidently move forward with their development programs and bring products to market. The outcome of this meeting marks another step in the steady adoption of G.hn and reaffirms the desire to unite a fragmented industry which currently uses a variety of incompatible technologies that typically address only single types of household wiring options – coax, phone line, or power line.
In addition to G.hn, ITU-T gave consent to the complementary G.9972 Recommendation for coexistence between G.hn-based products and other networking standards. Recommendation G.9972 specifies the process by which G.hn devices will coexist with power line devices that also adopt the G.9972 coexistence standard.
