News

Home Gateway Key To Supporting Consumer Electronics Devices In The Digital Home (28/1/2008)

HGI releases updated specification document to provide complete building blocks for home gateway

The Home Gateway will be a key component in connecting consumer electronic devices in the home to a wide range of internet services, says the Home Gateway Initiative (HGI), the industry body representing actors in the broadband home arena.

Speaking on the eve of the HGI's debut attendance at CES, HGI CTO Paolo Pastorino stated, "Networking opens up significant new revenue streams for electronics manufacturers and is becoming a crucial element in the design of consumer electronic devices.

"In this environment, where a growing number of devices in the digital home are networked, and great demand is placed on a combination of wireless and wired connections, a Home Gateway designed in line with the developed HGI specifications will be an essential component for achieving consistent service and giving customer satisfaction," continued Mr. Pastorino.

"Key to this is the interoperability between advanced consumer devices and the gateway. If there is a lesson that network operators have learned from the convergence of telecoms and entertainment technologies, it's that users will always call the service provider when there is a problem - never the device manufacturer.

"The Home Gateway can guarantee quality of service (QoS) across all managed services offered directly by the operator and is capable of providing consistent connectivity. The specifications outlined in the updated Release from the HGI define the building blocks of this device - designed to enable triple, or multi play services to the residential market."

The specifications document, in addition to the requirements of a basic broadband router, supports remote management and QoS of managed services, as well as additional mechanisms for IMS, UPnP, DLNA, SIP, wireless hotspot guest access, Connections Admission Control and Parental Control.

"European telcos have seen considerable success in deploying the home gateway, with in excess of 6 million now in customers' homes and small offices. North American carriers are introducing gateways in volume and we are now seeing a rapid growth of bundled services," continued Mr. Pastorino. "The Home Gateway can accelerate deployment by enhancing the reliability of advanced services and making them more user-friendly, whilst also supporting remote management, quality of service, device and services support, and troubleshooting."

www.homegatewayinitiative.org