HGI Announces Partnership Agreement With Broadband Forum

(Business News & Technology News, 20 Nov 2009)

The Home Gateway Initiative (HGI) has signed a liaison agreement with the Broadband Forum that will lead to close collaboration by both organisations on the development of standards and specifications for broadband networks worldwide.
The comprehensive agreement is designed to enhance the already active cooperation between HGI and the Broadband Forum. It allows each organization to provide input, and to release copyright on work-in-progress specifications to the partner organisation as working documents are drafted. The result will be acceleration and strong alignment of key specification work within the industry that leads to improvements in the capabilities of customers’ broadband networks.

The areas of cooperation by these two groups will be centred on architectural and functional requirements for customer located broadband equipment. HGI’s mission to solve the service, feature and technology challenges in the digital home complements the Broadband Forum’s core competencies in end-to-end architecture and management. The groups agreed to cooperate in addressing quality of service (QoS), software modularity, IPv6, energy efficiency and testing.

Both groups will meet regularly to discuss projects and priorities for industry standards in these and other areas. HGI Chief Technical Officer, Duncan Bees, said, “While informal cooperation has happened for some time, the strong formal collaboration between HGI and Broadband Forum that is now taking place is tremendously important for the industry. Both organisations bring a unique focus on a set of related problems, and are stronger by working together.

By jointly identifying goals, sharing work in progress, and avoiding duplication of efforts, our member companies receive better value for their investments of resources in our respective efforts. The industry has important issues to solve, and this agreement helps significantly.”

“The customer's network is now undoubtedly a vital part of all service providers’ networks, and one in which standardisation is becoming increasingly important,” said Robin Mersh, COO of the Broadband Forum. “This agreement gives greater breadth to the expertise of both the Broadband Forum and the HGI, which, in turn expedites critical work and ensures more advanced specifications and standards; ultimately the result is increased service provider deployment of CPE and improved QoS for the end-user.”

Together, the two groups represent over 200 companies, and over 30 service providers, including Arcor, AT&T, Belgacom, Bell, BT, Cable & Wireless, China Telecom, China Unicom, Chunghwa Telecom, Deutsche Telekom, Embarq, Fastweb, France Telecom, KDDI, KPN, KT, Magyar Telecom, NTT, OTE, Portugal Telecom, Qwest, SingTel, Swisscom, Telecom Italia, Tata Teleservices Ltd, TDC, Telecom Slovenije, Telecom New Zealand, Telefonica, Telekomunikacja Polska, Telekom Austria, Telekom Malaysia, Telenor, TeliaSonera, Telkom SA, Telstra, Telus and Verizon.