Home Gateway Initiative makes specifications public prior to closure

HGI makes all its Home Gateway specifications public prior to planned closure at end of June 2016

The Home Gateway Initiative (HGI), which has been the world’s leading organisation setting requirements for the broadband-connected Home Gateway since 2005, today confirmed it will cease operations as planned on Thursday, June 30, but will make its work available on a new archive website.

HGI members have worked tirelessly to complete the planned work on schedule, with ten documents published since mid-2015. These include the completely updated “Residential Profile” which specifies a comprehensive set of baseline requirements for Home Gateways as of 2016. The main differences from the previous versions released in 2007 and 2009 are much greater emphasis on Home Gateway service intelligence, more advanced wireless networking, IPv6 capability, and more challenging performance targets.

These documents and much of HGI’s other work which remains highly relevant will continue to be available for five years on a new, archive web-site.

“The Home Gateway remains a cornerstone of the broadband home and HGI’s 2016 Residential Profile, which reflects the latest thinking across the industry, can be used by both Service Providers and their vendors as a key element of a procurement process,” said HGI Board Member David Thorne.

Other recently published documents cover the smart home, wireless networking, hybrid (wired and wireless) access, and more advanced approaches to implementing Home Gateway technology. Collectively, they form a comprehensive guide to a smart-home enabled broadband architecture, and the HGI Service Providers consider them to be of great value to Home Gateway vendors and manufacturers of related components and technologies.

“The HGI-identified service requirements have helped vendors and Service Providers to agree on the appropriate technologies for the broadband home,” said Duncan Bees, HGI’s Chief Technology and Business Officer. “HGI’s work has added advanced functions to the Home Gateway within a well-defined home networking architecture. These include future-proof Quality of Service mechanisms that support a wide range of applications, improved energy efficiency, support for smart home services, and advanced wireless techniques. HGI’s work in general has been instrumental in helping vendors to address the Service Provider market, and we should not forget the impact of our innovative test programme.”

Luca Giacomello, Chairman of the HGI Board of Directors, said: “As we bring HGI’s work to a close, we can appreciate its major impact, both directly, and by the influence it has had on related industry projects. Services and business aspects were always central to the work of HGI and this led directly to the high and consistent quality of the technical output. The HGI board would like to thank all of the HGI member companies and individuals who have participated over the years, and to gratefully acknowledge our many formal and informal liaison partners.”