HomeGrid focuses on the development of a standard that will allow home networking over coax, power lines and phone lines — an ambitious project that has been decades in the making.

At a meeting in Geneva earlier this week, the ITU-T Study Group 15 standards committee reached an accord that allows such coexistence. The standard will be known as G.9972 and describes the process by which G.hn devices will work with power line devices that use technologies such as IEEE P1901. Extensions to G.hn will also be developed to to support SmartGrid applications.

G.hn-compliant devices will be capable of handling high-bandwidth rich multimedia content at speeds of up to 1 Gbit/s over these wireleine networking options.

The ITU says approval of the physical layer and architecture portion of the standard will now allow manufacturers of networked home devices — set-top boxes, residential gateways, computers, audio systems, DVD players, household appliances and any other device that might be connected to a network — to confidently move forward with their R&D programmes and rapidly bring products to market.

Experts predict that the first chipsets employing G.hn will be available in early 2010.

The data link layer of the new standard is expected to garner final approval at the group's next meeting in May 2010.

The Home Grid Forum said it would work closely with another trade group, the Broadband Forum, to aid semiconductor and systems manufacturers in building and bringing standards-compliant products to market, with products that fully conform to the G.hn standard.

In related news, another forum, the Wi-Fi Alliance , announced a new specification that will allow wireless-enabled devices to communicate with each other in a similar fashion to the way Bluetooth already allows.

The specification, code named 'Wi-Fi peer-to-peer,' can be implemented in any wifi device, from mobile phones, cameras, printers, and notebook computers, to keyboards and headphones, and will allow said devices to more effectively connect in order to print, share and display.

Certified devices, which are expected to appear from 2010, will be branded Wi-Fi Direct, the Alliance said.

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