HomePNA Blog

More Telcos, More (and faster) IPTV Deployments

By Rich Nesin, General Manager and Resident Philosopher, HomePNA

If you have been following this blog (and I hope you do) you may recall that I’ve mentioned that the telcos' interest IPTV has been increasing dramatically. I saw it at FTTH, IP Possibilities, and especially at the HomePNA Summit which attracted more telcos than equipment manufacturers. Yesterday, HomePNA board member Motorola  announced  a win at Farmers Telephone Cooperative. Being HomePNA (aka HPNA) centric, we immediately noticed that it includes their VIP1200 IP Set-top boxes which, we are happy to say, features HomePNA for home networking over coax (and, also needless to say, is HomePNA certified).

Ignoring the hype that I get paid to write, the technology really is maturing rapidly. CED Magazine ran an article last month about Bell Aliant that stated they “can comfortably get a couple of TV installs done in a day, and we’ve created enough buffer zone that our technicians can pick up another piece of work, whether it’s a TV trouble call or another high-speed install. We’ve gone from struggling to get two pieces of work done a day to comfortably getting three pieces of work done a day.” A far call from the six or seven hour installs we heard about a couple years ago. The HomePNA technology hasn’t changed so you can bet that this is mostly a result of experience, better installation procedures, diagnostic equipment and increased testing.

U-verse Doing It's Part For AT&T

By Rich Nesin, General Manager and Resident Philosopher, HomePNA

It’s nice to see good news such as “AT&T’s profits soar on wireless, U-verse revenues” about a member, especially when it involves your technology and increases other members’ shipments.

“But according to Ralph de la Vega, AT&T’s president and CEO of Mobility and Consumer Markets, it wasn’t just the iPhone that helped drive AT&T’s success this quarter. De la Vega said that the carrier’s shrinking churn rate was due in part to the company’s IP-based U-verse service and subsequent triple- and quad-plays offerings, which seem to have been successful in driving revenue per household and customer retention.” Good news and something that shouldn’t go away when the iPhone exclusivity ends.

And, speaking of quad play …. If you weren’t aware, I’m a fan of TelcoTV. I live in PA so naturally I called Verizon to see if FIOS was available yet (I know they use MOCA and not HomePNA but nobody’s perfect). A very pleasant and helpful Verizon customer service representative searched for, but unfortunately couldn’t find, my house -- even though they have been providing my wireless service for years. Oh well, maybe someday. (While driving the other day I saw a billboard for CenturyLink near my house - and they use HomePNA for their TV service).

HomePNA Gets (even more) Real

By Rich Nesin, General Manager and Resident Philosopher, HomePNA

It’s been a busy week. The first half was spent staffing the HomePNA demo in the Fiber To The Home (FTTH) conference. Good demo, great interest, and some interesting applications and products I’ll write about soon.

Thursday was the HomePNA Summit. We had over 100 attendees, half from service providers, and some really great sessions. I’m a marketing type so I don’t get insulted when you don’t believe every piece of earnest hyperbole that I pound into my keyboard, but nothing cuts through the hype like respected telcos and satellite TV providers such as CenturyLink, Bell Aliant, AT&T, TELUS, Telefonica, Tata Sky and yes talking about their own real life experiences with home networking technology – getting the install times down and customer satisfaction up. No really, don’t take my word for it. Read Carol Wilson’s article “HED: HomePNA driving down install times”  in Telephony Magazine. She quotes real numbers, real times and actionable advice.

And please read the HomePNA PR about the Summit. Service providers are joining HomePNA as we continue to gain momentum in triple play home networking. And not just in North America; it’s being adopted worldwide thanks to robust operation over both coax and phone wires.

And while you’re at it, don't miss Jim Barthold article in CED magazine “Beyond the Triple Play” that ran yesterday. Jim describes Bell Aliant’s experience establishing leading triple play services and their plans for the future. Good reading.

Home Network Management – an Activity Enabled by a Platform

By Rich Nesin, General Manager and Resident Philosopher, HomePNA

Six or seven years ago who would have thought that service providers would not only consider home networks to be part of their network but would want to manage them? Well they sure do now. According to an article in Billing and OSS World magazine last week, the home network enables service providers to partake in a host of other applications that span from utilities to health care. And lest we forget that pesky need to reduce service costs and especially minimize the number of service calls. This isn’t exactly news but neither is the requirement for remote monitoring and management – essential to providing a stable home network for these applications.

So today, instead of evangelists (like me) spinning the story, we have technologists and product managers at leading service providers like Verizon (who use MOCA for home networking) and TELUS (who use HomePNA) describing their plans for the home network.

By coincidence, I was discussing the very same topic last week with a respected engineer at another equally well known leading telco that uses HomePNA for its’ triple play IPTV service. He told me that, from their operations center, he had diagnosed a home networking problem in his boss’s house down to a loose coax connector on one of the set-top boxes. Turns out the boss had previously detached the connector while he was working on his entertainment center. Connector tightened; problem solved. The fix was verified by a quick to the operations center and, most importantly, no service call was required.

Well one reason (as my friend the engineer will tell you) that this particular service provider choose HomePNA was the attention to integrated remote diagnostics and management capabilities (and we at HomePNA believe that HomePNA 3.1 has best in class capabilities). And one reason for this blog is to talk about how this stuff is real and a lot of it is integrated into the residential gateways, set-top boxes and other equipment being installed being in customers’ homes today.

G.hn Home Network Standard – Not Quite Smooth Sailing

By Rich Nesin, General Manager and Resident Philosopher, HomePNA

Well fun times for all you ITU G.hn watchers. As I wrote back in June, G.hn has settled on some "Baseline Text" for most of the protocol pieces that lie upstream of the G.9960 G.hn PHY (which anybody that follows G.hn can tell you was consented last December). So … here’s to more smooth sailing in the standards body. Did I hear a “not quite”? True, the group is moving briskly toward consent at the September 28 to October 9 meeting in Geneva , however it seems everyone isn’t running in the same direction.

So what’s happening? It’s gotten more contentious, that's what. At the G.hn meeting in Concord, Ca last week, some of the attendees (guess who) introduced a contribution to add compatibility between HomePlug and G.hn. If you’ve been following the evolution of the standard, you probably remember the decision made long-ago to work for co-existence with existing technologies, not compatibility. That decision was pragmatic and probably prevented a HomePlug-UPA-HD-PLC-MOCA-HomePNA (did I leave anyone out?) shootout that could have killed, or at least maimed, the new G.hn all-wire standard effort. The changes proposed last week would have affected both the MAC and PHY in fairly significant ways and may have posed a problem for the one chip-all wire goal.

Anyway, to make a long story short, the group’s historical reticence to require compatibility with other home networking technologies combined with major angst over anything that could delay completion of the final drafts caused even some participants who planned to stay neutral at the meeting to dissent. The contribution was presented, debated, dissected, debated some more and, in the end, fell far short of consensus for technical and practical reasons. Is it smooth sailing from here on? Can’t say for sure as all eyes (or at least the ones that care enough to read this blog) turn to Geneva. It’s not over till it’s over and then the market will decide.

Major Indian Cable TV Provider DigiCable joins AT&T, Telefonica and others at HomePNA Summit

By Rich Nesin, General Manager and Resident Philosopher, HomePNA

The HomePNA Summit has just added another major speaker to its’ service provider line-up. DigiCable, one of India largest cable TV suppliers, joins leading international, national and regional telcos AT&T , Telefonica, TELUS, and Bell Aliant , and Satellite service providers Tata Sky  and YES as speakers at the event.

The Summit, which also features major equipment suppliers and system integrators such as Cisco and Motorola, showcases the momentum and appeal of HomePNA technology to service providers of all sizes and types all over the world.

The HomePNA Summit, which is especially drawing service providers to it’s audience in addition to equipment manufacturers and system integrators interested in learning about these companies’ experience with HomePNA, will be held September 30 to October 1, 2008 in Houston, TX co-located with the FTTH conference and expo .

Telus reports results. To Speak at HomePNA Summit

By Rich Nesin, General Manager and Resident Philosopher, HomePNA

Hope you saw the announcement of the first HomePNA Technology Summit last week. The Summit features a lot of speakers from service providers such as TELUS's Ann Slevinsky, Manager of TELUS TV Development. Very timely since TELUS is serious about offering TV services especially to offset the declines from, you guessed it, their traditional voice service.

In their 2Q results announcement last Friday, TELUS reported over 100,000 TELUS TV (IPTV) customers --  which was reported by TeleGeography to be a 125% jump in subscribers. In the words of Darren Entwistle, TELUS president and CEO, “We continue to improve our competitive offering for our customers and enjoyed continued strong subscriptions to TELUS TV this quarter.” Together with the launch of their new satellite service across B.C. and Alberta last July, TELUS claims they can now offer bundled entertainment services to more than 90% of households.

It should be interesting to hear what Ann has to say about their experience deploying HomePNA in those TV homes.

HomePNA Announces First Technology Summit

August 4, 2009 – The HomePNA Alliance today announces its first Technology Summit to be held September 30 and October 1, 2009 in Houston Texas.  The Summit, which is also being promoted by the FTTH Council, will be co-located with the 2009 FTTH Conference & Expo. The Summit will focus on technical and business insights surrounding HomePNA technology and its role in enabling an advanced digital home experience for end users.

The Summit will feature speakers from among the world’s largest service providers, including AT&T, Telefonica, YES, TELUS, Tata Sky and Bell Aliant who will discuss HomePNA’s role in creating compelling and competitive home networking and IPTV product portfolios for their respective companies.  At the Technology Summit, Cisco, Motorola, CopperGate Communications and other leaders will also give their perspectives on the technology that so many service providers have adopted due to its fast performance and rich features desired by service providers.

Maximizing profits in the evolving IPTV marketplace

“Service providers of all types and sizes across the globe are focused on the great opportunities provided by triple play, digital entertainment and interactivity – all applications enabled by a robust home network,” said Bill Simmelink, HomePNA president.  “The most effective approach to providing a high-performance home network uses existing wires, and the

Summit will explore why the HomePNA standard provides the best path and opportunities for maximizing the benefits of this huge new opportunity.”

“Service providers learn best from other service providers. The HomePNA Summit will offer a truly global service provider perspective on this important and evolving trend,” said Bernie Arnason of Pivot Media, a co-producer of the event.

 

HomePNA technology is the highest-performing home network standard today, delivering a quality video experience for viewers while enabling service providers to reduce installation costs, utilize remote management and diagnostics to reduce operational expenses, and even reduce end-user costs through unified billing.  Over 10 million HomePNA chipsets have been shipped.  Each week, 30,000 homes add HomePNA-based networks worldwide - with over 40 service providers.

IEEE P1901 Has a Draft Standard

By Rich Nesin, General Manager and Resident Philosopher, HomePNA

Well the IEEE P1901 Working Group certainly got its act together. Last week they approved the first IEEE P1901 Draft Standard with more than an 82% majority -- which represents some great consensus building.

This doesn’t mean that all the work is done but it certainly is a big step in the right direction. According to Wikipedia, some P1901 watchers attribute this to inclusion of the ITU G.hn MAC as one of the supported MACs (yes, one of them -- P1901 still carries a lot of baggage) but it’s not clear to me whether that’s a done deal or not. I heard there is still some work to be done on the MACs and of course the draft standard has to go through the IEEE’s letter ballot/comment period/resolution process to resolve any open issues. Comments are resolved at P1901 meetings and the next opportunity will be the Boston meeting at the end of October).

Standardization is good for the industry. That’s why HomePNA decided to standardize its technology under the ITU years ago. It levels the playing field and insures that the technology is available to everyone. The market will decide the winners.

AT&T 2Q U-verse Results Just In

By Rich Nesin, General Manager and Resident Philosopher, HomePNA

AT&T's second-quarter results - just in - reported “continued strong growth in AT&T U-verse TV subscribers with a net increase of 248,000 to reach 1.6 million in service.”  The release also reports that more than 75% of the U-verse TV subscribers choose a triple (with broadband and voice) or quad-play (with broadband, voice and mobile) option.

Since a HomePNA network is installed in each of those houses it's not only great for AT&T but for HomePNA members.  It also provides continuing validation for the case we have been making about the value of bundled services. 

And while we are on the subject of bundled residential services, Kurt Scherf from Parks Associates has released a new free whitepaper, IPTV and the Digital Home,  that discusses the success of TelcoTV. Parks forecasts the number of Telco/IPTV subscribers to grow from around two million households in 2005 to over 35 million by the end of 2009 and addresses the question of why consumers might choose TelcoTV over more traditional video-centric offerings such as cable or satellite.

I like Parks' whitepapers. They focus on residential technologies and combine quantitative and qualitative data from all sides: consumers, manufacturers and service providers. “What has spurred this growth? The lesson from the significant increase in telco/IPTV subscribers over the past few years is that consumers choose to switch service providers for a variety of reasons and not necessarily to get that one “killer application”. When asked why they plan to switch providers for television services (among other services), consumers show a variety of churn triggers. They are about as likely to indicate that they’ve grown disenchanted with their current provider, that they’re expecting a significant up-front pricing deal, or that they expect better customer service as they are to indicate a desire for new features not available from their current provider.”

The accompanying chart shows money as a major but certainly not only motivator. “There are a variety of service features that, when implemented, could entice consumers to pick one provider over another. IPTV/telco service providers have a head start in offering some of these elements, which go beyond traditional TV”.  Customer service is on the chart and "Telcos find themselves in the unique position of having a comparatively better reputation than their competitors for their customer support practices".  HomePNA's remote management and diagnostic capabilities certainly play to that strength and promise enhanced capabilities for service providers that utilize them. The list, which includes other soon gotta-haves, goes on...