Action on the Home Front
9:40 AM -- The home networking sector's in the spotlight today, following news of a standards breakthrough and market talk of a chip market acquisition.
On Friday the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) announced it has "successfully agreed upon the key components of the G.hn specification." (See G.hn Specs Ratified.)
This constitutes a significant breakthrough in the home networking standards world, as G.hn developments had, according to industry sources, hit something of a brick wall recently due to opposition from Orange (NYSE: FTE), which had been unhappy about a particular detail (related to forward error correction) of the recommendations.
News of the breakthrough prompted Design of Systems on Silicon (DS2) to immediately announce its "plan to launch its G.hn-compliant DSS9960 chipset next year... Approval of the G.hn standard marks a major step forward on the road to a unified market for wireline products. G.hn offers silicon manufacturers like DS2 a stable technical specification based on a single PHY/MAC to speed up the development of standard-compliant products."
That's not all, though. The home networking market heated up even further Monday morning with speculation that Sigma Designs Inc. (Nasdaq: SIGM) is set to announce a $200 million bid to buy fellow chip firm CopperGate Communications Inc. Both have been active in developing the G.hn standard. (See CopperGate Joins HomeGrid Board and Sigma Joins HomeGrid Board.)
— Ray Le Maistre, International News Editor, Light Reading
On Friday the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) announced it has "successfully agreed upon the key components of the G.hn specification." (See G.hn Specs Ratified.)
This constitutes a significant breakthrough in the home networking standards world, as G.hn developments had, according to industry sources, hit something of a brick wall recently due to opposition from Orange (NYSE: FTE), which had been unhappy about a particular detail (related to forward error correction) of the recommendations.
News of the breakthrough prompted Design of Systems on Silicon (DS2) to immediately announce its "plan to launch its G.hn-compliant DSS9960 chipset next year... Approval of the G.hn standard marks a major step forward on the road to a unified market for wireline products. G.hn offers silicon manufacturers like DS2 a stable technical specification based on a single PHY/MAC to speed up the development of standard-compliant products."
That's not all, though. The home networking market heated up even further Monday morning with speculation that Sigma Designs Inc. (Nasdaq: SIGM) is set to announce a $200 million bid to buy fellow chip firm CopperGate Communications Inc. Both have been active in developing the G.hn standard. (See CopperGate Joins HomeGrid Board and Sigma Joins HomeGrid Board.)
— Ray Le Maistre, International News Editor, Light Reading
