10 June 2009 - The Home Gateway Initiative (HGI) announced today that it will act as the Technical Partner for the European Telecommunications Network Operators Association (ETNO) home gateway energy consumption Benchmark called “GREEN” (Green Router for Energy Efficient home Networking).   GREEN benchmark involves chip vendors and suppliers of Home Gateways (HG) and is aimed at elaborating solutions to achieve low-power-state power consumption targets. 

“HGI is delighted to support ETNO by acting as the technical partner for the GREEN benchmark”, said Duncan Bees, Chief Technical Officer of HGI.  “HGI members, both service providers and vendors, are working in the HGI Energy Efficiency Task Force (TF) to specify operating modes and power saving mechanisms for Home Gateways, with the goal of reducing power consumption when the HG is not actively performing services.  The ETNO GREEN benchmark will help to provide a snapshot of current state of the art in power consumption of Home Gateways.”

Lorenzo Radice, Chairman of Energy Task Force in ETNO, said, “ETNO plans to use the HGI’s Energy TF work as the technical basis of the GREEN benchmark.

“ETNO’s GREEN benchmark will highlight the current best practice in meeting the power targets for Home Gateways set out by the EU Code of Conduct. The HG operating modes used in GREEN will be aligned with the HGI Energy Efficiency TF work, and the results of the tests will be shared with HGI.  ETNO believes that HGI’s work in Energy Efficiency and Test will be a major step for the HG industry,” added Mr. Radice.

“For HGI, the GREEN results will be a highly valued reality check for our Release 3 specifications, which will include a full specification of the requirements for HG power modes. It will also assist HGI in developing HG energy test suites as part of future HGI Test events”, concluded Mr. Bees.

The HGI was founded and launched by nine telecom operators (Belgacom, BT, Deutsche Telekom, France Telecom, KPN, TeliaSonera, NTT, Telecom Italia, and Telefonica) in 2004, and now has members from around the world, representing the entire spectrum of players in the broadband home arena.  The main tasks of the HGI are to establish home gateway-related technical and interoperability specifications and provide input to standardisation bodies.

The European Telecommunications Network Operators’ Association (ETNO) was established in May 1992 and has become the principal policy group for European electronic communications network operators.  ETNO’s primary purpose is to establish a constructive dialogue between its member companies and decision-makers and other actors involved in the development of the European Information Society to the benefit of users.