Cebit 07: Panasonic instant home net plan 'doomed'

Data-over-mains links for living room 'need a standard and more than one source'

Clive Akass, Personal Computer World 22 Mar 2007

A Pansonic plan to get its data-over-mains "instant networking" chip adopted in consumer-electronics devices is doomed to failure, a company specialising in the technology said at Cebit.

The Panasonic technology is one of at least four competing for the potentially huge market for devices that use ordinary household wiring to carry data. It would allow a television, say, to link up to a home network simply by plugging it in.

Just about every firm showing digital-home products at Cebit had some form of powerline communications device on offer.

Panasonic has said it intends to implement its own version in its consumer products. Some 70 other companies, including Sony, support a different specification drawn up by the Home Plug Alliance (HPA).

In addition the Spanish company DS2 offers a chip using a specification from the rival Universal Powerline Association; and a UK start-up called Siconnect has developed a proprietary technology it says could be implemented for $5 a device.

But even Panasonic is not powerful enough to push its technology against the tide of the HPA, according to Werner Fehn, director of product management at Devolo, which makes such powerline devices.

If mains networking is to take off in the consumer market, products from different vendors will need to subscribe to the same standard. Fehn said support for the HPA spec made it a de facto standard, and consumer electronics companies would not want to rely on Panasonic chips because they would have only a single source and the company would have complete control over prices.

Fehn pointed out that by the end of this year at least five companies will be making HPA chips. He said: "Panasonic has a huge problem because they want to be a chipset vendor and a device maker. They have to decide to do one of the other. "

Fehn sits on an HPA committee and his company uses product base on the HPA-compliant Intellon chip; but it also offers DS2-based products.

Intellon gave a demonstration of its chip streaming video over a power lead, apparently more resistant to interference that a DS2 chip. Fehn said the Intellon link is indeed more robust in noisy environments but the DS2 chips are better in massive enterprise systems, especially where computers needed to be remotely controlled.

PCW tests on the Panasonic system showed no noticeable interference from household appliances, including energy-saving lamps.

Intellon said more than a dozen companies at Cebit were showing products passed on its chip. They include Actiontec, Aztech, Devolo, D-Link, Linksys, Netgear, Siemens and Zyxel.

However, there are fears that the technology will raise the radio noise floor, and even interfere with aircraft communication above cities, if widely adopted. Some frequencies are 'notched out' to avoid trouble, but critics say regulations do not consider the cumulative affect of millions of installations.

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