HomePNA Blog

One Million U-Verse Viewers – No Problem!

By Michelle Gamble-Risley, director, HomePNA Marketing and Public Relations

Right on the heels of our recent announcement that AT&T expects to hit the 1 million mark for U-verse subscribers by year's end, recent news reports about Microsoft Mediaroom IPTV platform support our projections. Microsoft announced that 2 million customers now use Mediaroom IPTV platform globally, with AT&T driving much of the growth.

 According to Telephony Online, "What we are seeing is a real shift from companies coming out and building and testing IPTV to real deployment and adoption that is driving momentum for the services," said Paula Reinman, director of outbound marketing for Microsoft Mediaroom. "The ramp is really good news and the interesting part of it is why that is happening and the indicators are that growth is coming not just from new customers and deployments but from customers being able to leverage new capabilities in the platform."

 Are we surprised by the increasing interest in IPTV? No, we've been watching the momentum grow over the last year; slowly building into the expected wave of adoption. AT&T certainly seems to believe it's not just about to happen but is happening.  AT&T also launched U-verse Total Home Digital Video Recorders services using Mediaroom DVR Anywhere technology and continues to differentiate its offering on features. For both AT&T and Microsoft we expect deployments to continue to grow strongly. For all you prospective HomePNA members out there, I hope you're paying attention to the obvious synergy between IPTV home networking and IPTV middleware technologies.

The More Bandwidth the Merrier

By Michelle Gamble-Risley, Director, HomePNA Marketing

More HomePNAmembers companies are integrating components and devising ways to increase throughput speeds to make the IP based home entertainment experience even better. Take for example, Actiontec Electronics’ announcement of its new line of triple-play VDSL2/ADSL2+ Universal DSL Wireless Gateways, which include support for HomePNA and MOCA in addition to Ethernet and WiFi, and are designed to fuel the next generation of high-speed data, HDTV, and Voice over IP services. The advanced gateway offers throughput speeds up to 100 Mbps upstream and downstream over existing copper access lines -- enabling carriers to deploy ultra-broadband service via any access architecture including CO-based DSLAM, remote DSLAM, or FTTx and any access protocol (ATM or PTM).  With guaranteed QoS and a data rate of 320 megabits per second, HomePNA 3 can provide over 200 megabits per second of user throughput, enough speed to really make use of the high performance DSL interface.

What does this mean to the average consumer—more bandwidth to accommodate the rise of social media and IPTV where video and audio files suck up bandwidth faster than you can download. New products like the Universal DSL Wireless Gateway increase speeds and capabilities enabling the user to have the capability for an uninterrupted, video-rich entertainment experiences without objectionable glitches. So as the proliferation of social media continues to rise and IPTV becomes a common household entertainment experience, the end user can expect it will all happen without their knowledge or need to know. Now isn't that cool? We certainly think so.

HomePNA's New President

By Michelle Gamble-Risley, Director, HomePNA Marketing

Many of you may already be aware but we have a new president! His name is William "Bill" Simmelink and he is president of HomePNA promoter company CopperGate Communications. Bill recently assumed the position vacated by our friend Rich Nesin who is now doing consulting and will continue to provide marketing services for HomePNA. Bill has been a member of the HomePNA board of directors since 2006. Before CopperGate, Simmelink was general manager of the packet voice and video business at Texas Instruments and vice president of business development at Telogy Networks, one of the industry's pioneers and strongest players in Voice-over-IP, acquired by Texas Instruments in 1999.

We don't expect any dramatic changes now that Bill has assumed the reins. We will certainly continue to blog to all of readers. Bill's goals are to continue to help retain and recruit prospective members and continue the transformation of HomePNA into a really effective user community. We've recently picked up several new members, which we will announce very soon. And with AT&T heading toward 1 million subscribers by year's end, we firmly believe our ecosystem of members will continue to grow and thrive.