HomePlug Alliance jacks up powerline home networking

HomePlug has a history of announcing that they will someday have an improvement to their technology. This sort of pre-deliverable announcement is characterized by many in the industry as vaporware and should be labeled for what it really is: "just another HomePlug vapor claim."

By the way, the HomePlug guys announcement is just them maintaining their "me, too" marketing approach to try and counter G.hn.
For example, G.hn has already begun work on adding MIMO... HomePlug announces they are working on MIMO.
G.hn defines a very broad frequency range, HomePlug announces they are stretching their range.
G.hn is proven to deliver extremely high data rates over powerline, HomePlug claims that their new AV2 will deliver high data rates (mainly because their current AV/1901 implementation is fairly anemic).

The ability of G.hn to work in the extended frequency range, by the way, was touted just a few weeks back by supporters of HomePlug as a negative as they claim it may interfere with FM radio and then other higher frequency radio services. So now I guess they believe it is ok to do that? And, by the way, the G.hn guys have agreed with a global radio regulatory body (ITU-R) that G.hn will have a standard frequency range up to 80 MHz with only an option to go beyond that. I suppose HomePlug will also comply (be forced to comply), but they will claim they can do so much more when in real world deployments they will not be allowed to operate in the higher range (for examples on HomePlug problems in these higher ranges, look into the Gigle debacle with their "FM distortion technology" which is AV operating in an extended range).

The routing and repeating announcement really translates to "Currently, AV can't support repeating and relaying so we need to plug this huge hole in capabilities as any extended deployment or one in a noisy environment (typical powerline, actually) fails to deliver any high data rates or QoS." Some advancement, eh... typical HomePlug marketing... turn a negative fact into a positive through claiming a future function will address the problem. And, yes, G.hn has had this defined for years and demonstrated it already.

The market has a choice coming soon... either vapor claims or real deliverables; marketing spin doctoring or actual result; legacy, limited technology or one that operates at the maximum data rate & QoS achievable over any wire, not only powerline. Some though decision, eh?

Wow, Anonymous should have a reality check. He seems to have some illusion that another PLC technology is real and better that HomePlug. Prove it. At last count the score was about >50M to nothing. The other stuff he promotes doesn't even have one unit deployed. Talk about hype and vaporware... Unbelievable.

PS - Enough with the propaganda campaign. Let the technologies compete.

Anonymous’ comment is laughably ironic. G.hn has been a trail of vapourware and misguided hype. Haven’t they announced the completion of the standard three times already? Now Homeplug comes out with a real next generation standard-in-waiting, and the reaction from G.hn is “ah, HomeplugAV2 has MIMO, we better try and get that in G.hn”.

So if G.hn follows Homeplug again and patches in a MIMO capability, will this be in the products announced for Q1 2010, I mean Q4 2010 or is it Q1 2011 now? Or is the “first version” of G.hn obsolete already?

The simple truth is that G.hn offers nothing more than HomeplugAV / IEEE 1901. When it eventually arrives it will be more than four years and 100million units late. With no additional benefit. And HomeplugAV2 coming soon with real next generation performance and backwards interoperability. Some tough decision, eh?