SOPHIA ANTIPOLIS, France -- This week, the ETSI Plugtests™ service has hosted an event of major importance. The first Powerline Interoperability event hosted at ETSI was organized to identify any technical issues, which could affect the deployment strategies for Powerline products.

Although the technology is now maturing and much of the equipment in test this week is in production, feedback from this first event should be valuable to the future standardization work and to the Powerline communications world as a whole.

One of the participants at this Plugtest was the French Gas company – Gaz de France, who in parallel with Electricité de France are actively evaluating power line modems that will allow a “mobile” means of connection for data exchange between their test labs. The other participants are listed below.

Victor Dominguez, the chairman of the ETSI Technical committee PLT, observed; “We are testing here with partners and competitors in a commercially free environment. This is a process that allows the industry players to move from mere co-existence in the network to the “Holy Grail” of full Interoperability in all packet switched networks.”

European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI)