Fast Net News, DSL Prime, DOCSIS Report

BT has distributed several hundred thousand home powerline units for home networking and they are working fine according to several reviews. Years of hype - and promises of speeds of 200 and 400 megabits - have made most of us cynical about powerline home networks. It's time to rethink that skepticism.  Xavier Niel at free.fr now includes a powerline chip in the cord of his Freebox and probably has deployed over a million homes. BT and Telfonica are in volume deployment of IPTV over powerline, although that is mostly standard definition.

    John Egan of DS2 tells me real world speeds rarely drop below 20 megabits and frequently are much higher. Power lines are inherently noisy so performance varies considerably, but SD TV is having few problems. Egan is confident that the next generation of chips, to the G.hn standard, will support HD speeds to multiple TVs. G.hn has been designed with forward error correction and QOS to make HD highly reliable as well.

     The chipmakers are enthusiastic about G.hn, which will run over powerlines, coax, and practically anything else including barbed wire. The carriers are waiting for results before committing, however.

    It hasn't been easy going for powerline, with competing standards and disappointing early results. DS2 was struggling but now is hopeful about a reorganization.