By Donna Yasay, HomeGrid Forum President
Donna Yasay, HomeGrid Forum President, speaking on the ‘Standards and IoT Strategies’ panel at the IoT Evolution Conference, Caesars Place, Las Vegas, July 2016
2016 has been a very busy and exciting year for HomeGrid Forum! Reflecting on the last 12 months has reminded me how much we’ve achieved since our first certified product was announced in 2013.
We have become a truly global Forum, attending, and speaking at industry events around the world from the IoT Tech Expo series, CES Asia in Shanghai, the IoT Evolution Conference (the image above shows me participating in the ‘Standards and IoT Strategies’ panel), and Smart Summit events to network with key figures in the industry. At these events we demonstrated why G.hn is the number one technology to fulfil the needs for an in-home ultra-broadband experience, by extending Wi-Fi coverage and performance throughout the home and creating a true hybrid network over any of the available mediums.
On the Service Provider front, we congratulate two vendors for successful May launches; ARRIS for launching the first G.hn Powerline managed adapter to Bell Canada, as well as Comtrend for launching their G.hn powerline and powerline to wireless extender to the largest Cable Company in Europe Liberty Global.
On the Retail front, we once again congratulate ARRIS for launching 3 routers embedded with G.hn, along with a powerline and powerline to wireless extender and Comtrend for releasing G.hn over coax adapters. G.hn also expanded its footprint beyond in-home networking in Asia with G.hn in electric vehicle charging stations throughout China and MDU’s using UTP RJ-45 and phonelines in Korea.
In May, we exhibited at CES Asia for the first time in HomeGrid Forum’s history, which is significant as we consider the Asian market to have growth potential for G.hn. We held demonstrations at our booth to highlight why G.hn is the most powerful home networking technology for delivering high quality content at Gigabit speeds. We also demonstrated ubiquitous connectivity through every wired medium, such as powerline, coax, phoneline and plastic optical fiber (POF).
In September this year, HomeGrid Forum and Allion Labs, the organization’s Accredited Testing House (ATH) in Taiwan, announced that 11 products have achieved the Forum’s prestigious G.hn Certification in the last twelve months, meaning that the number of G.hn certified products has doubled since last year – an amazing success!
In addition to this, last week we announced a further six products, powered by three different silicon providers, achieved certification at our Plugfest event held in Shanghai, China, in December – bringing the total number of HomeGrid Forum certified products to 19. Hosting this year’s testing event in China is a major boost to our efforts in the region and will enable many more products to launch here. This followed the news in November that Xingtera has become the first G.hn certified silicon vendor based in China.
Both October and November were particularly busy months for us! We attended Broadband World Forum in London, where Livia Rosu, Marketing Workgroup Chair, and Abdul Khan, Compliance and Interoperability Workgroup Chair, represented HomeGrid Forum. Many people were interested in learning about the success of G.hn technology and the crucial role this technology will play in the coming years. In addition to this, I travelled to Santa Clara to attend the IoT Tech Expo North America and spoke on the ‘interoperability as the key to success’ panel.
In November, Yuqing Niu, Xingtera’s CEO and our Marketing Work Chair for Asia, spoke at two events in Asia. Firstly, at the IoT China Business Forum, Chengdu, which was great, particularly as the Chinese market will be key for G.hn products in the future as it continues to dominate the global tech industry. And secondly at Smart Summit Asia where the audience were really interested to hear about G.hn as it was not something they had come across before. It was great to be able to explain how an intelligent technology like G.hn can serve as the backbone of the near-end IoT infrastructure.
One of the main reasons for HomeGrid Forum’s high levels of success this year is that there is no other technology on the market that is as versatile and future-proof as G.hn, with the backing of international standards organizations. While G.hn is just at the beginning of its journey and rapidly gaining momentum, other technologies are inevitably falling short and will likely depart from the industry.
We’re looking forward to the year ahead and will continue to champion the capabilities and benefits of G.hn to people around the world.
If you’d like to connect with us in the New Year we’ll be attending CES in Las Vegas, January 5-8, 2017.