By Prince Osuagwu

IT seems as if the International Telecommunications Union, ITU, is bench marking the growth of world technological improvements with activities in the Nigeria ICT sector. This is as the world telecom body, at the weekend, approved new standard tagged G.hn, for wiring new digital offerings like High Definition TV (HDTV) and digital Internet Protocol TV (IPTV) in homes.

The  cutting-edge technical standard, according to ITU, would usher in new era in smart home networking systems and applications.  The standard, is expected to enable service providers to deploy High Definition TV (HDTV) and digital Internet Protocol TV (IPTV) among others at more cost effective platforms.

It will also allow consumer electronics manufacturers to seamlessly network all types of home entertainment, home automation and home security products, and greatly simplify consumers’ purchasing and installation processes.

G.hn-compliant devices will be capable of handling high-bandwidth rich multimedia content at speeds of up to 1 Gbit/s over household wiring options, including coaxial cable and standard phone and power lines.
This development reinforces the statement made by the ITU secretary General, Dr Hamadoun Toure, recently in Abuja Nigeria, that in the next five to seven years, all homes in Africa may have been connected with cheap broadband and internet access as well as other new offering like HDTV and IPTV.

*Secretary General of ITU, Dr Hamadoun Toure

It also reinforces the business foresight of notable Nigerian business men and women like, Chief Raymond Dokpesi who flagged off his PayTV system, DAARSAT, on the platform of High definition TV when existing operators were yet to migrate to the platform, Chairman of Globacom, Otunba Mike Adenuga jr, and CEO of MainOne, Mrs Funke Opeke, who respectively, invested heavily in  multimillion dollar submarine fibre cable systems, knowing that it is where the future of world broadband connections is heading to.

Both landed their projects in Lagos Nigeria recently from UK and Portugal respectively, signalling the take of cheap connection of new offerings and services to homes in Nigeria, West Africa and indeed the entire African continent.

So for people in Africa, the ITU new standard would be a boost as it promises to deliver many times the throughput of existing wireless and wired technologies.

Approval of the new standard will 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.

According to the Director of ITU’s Telecommunication Standardization Bureau, Mr Malcolm Johnson, “G.hn is a technology that gives new use to the cabling most people already have in their homes. The remarkable array of applications that it will enable includes energy efficient smart appliances, home automation and telemedicine devices. The sheer weight of industry support behind this innovation is testament to the extraordinary potential of this standard to transform home networking.”

The physical layer and architecture portion of the standard were approved by ITU-T Study Group 15 on October 9. 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, a group set up to promote G.hn, is developing a certification programme together with the Broadband Forum that will aid semiconductor and systems manufacturers in building and bringing standards-compliant products to market, with products that fully conform to the G.hn standard bearing the HomeGrid-certified logo.

Also agreed at the recent ITU-T Study Group 15 meeting was a new standard that focuses on coexistence between G.hn-based products and those using other technologies. Known as G.9972, the standard describes the process by which G.hn devices will work with power line devices that use technologies such as IEEE P1901. In addition, experts say that they will develop extensions to G.hn to support SmartGrid applications.