Total commitment to residential compatibility with Next Generation Architectures

11 June 2009 - The successful marriage of the Home Gateway with Next Generation Architecture is critical to the ongoing expansion of services to the home and is part of a significant widening of the scope of work within the HGI, said the organisation’s Chief Technology Officer Duncan Bees at the FTTx Summit in Munich yesterday.

Mr Bees explained that HGI – which comprises service providers and vendors from all parts of the world –originally had a mission to drive a common understanding of triple-play Home Gateways. But the Home Gateway definition continues to evolve and many new features will be included within the HGI’s Release 3 Residential Profile. 

Additionally, four broad themes will be addressed in the 2009/2010 period:
•   Next Generation Architectures and the impact upon service deployment models and home located equipment;
•   Energy efficiency in the home;
•   Diagnostics and troubleshooting tools for the Service Providers.
•    Impact of over-the-top services.

Regarding Next Generation Access, the HGI believes that major issues to be addressed as service providers move towards high speed DSL or fibre, in a variety of topologies include the total replacement of analogue voice service, the deployment topologies and placement of equipments within the home, regulatory issues, and the impact on equipment such as Home Gateways of much higher data rates.

As a first step towards the NGA architecture, the HGI today published a new requirements document, “HGI-RD006-R2 Requirements for the HG Interworking with an External NT”.  The HGI will be extending this “2-box” approach with an integrated HG/NT “1-box” update of the Residential Profile as part of Release 3.

“We are particularly focused on NGA because the industry needs to understand the service provider issues and deal with them in practical ways. These trends have a direct impact on the HG and home network,” said Mr Bees.

The announcement comes only a day after HGI announced it would be acting 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 and is aimed at elaborating solutions to achieve low-power-state power consumption targets.