HomePlug Powerline Alliance

Importance of Interoperability

In my last blog, I talked about the IEEE 1901 Draft Standard that was approved in Tokyo and its interoperability with HPAV. In this blog, I would like to demonstrate with use case, the real significance of Interoperability for all the stakeholders.

Use Cases:

a. Pierre lives in an apartment in Paris, France. Most of his neighbors, including Jean who is Pierre’s best friend, already have HomePlug adaptors; HomePlug embedded STBs for IPTV delivery applications and video distribution. Pierre buys a non-HomePlug/non-IEEE 1901 solution along with his Plasma TV set for IPTV applications. He tries to connect the adaptors in his apartment. Since the adaptors he bought were not HomePlug/IEEE 1901 interoperable, he started having problems receiving clear picture on his TV set, because of interference. The picture is grainy and the sound quality is horrible. He tries fiddling with his TV set and changing the connection outlets but with no success. He concludes that the problem is with the TV set and he returns the TV set back to the store. This is a significant loss for the store from which he bought and to the brand of the TV, he purchased, as studies have showed that if the first experience is bad with a particular brand or the store the user refrains from buying the same brand or from the store in the future.

The above use case demonstrates the importance of interoperability for the user as well as the players in the value chain (TV manufacturers, Electronic Stores). Having an interoperable solution would prevent the above scenario. IEEE 1901 interoperable/HomePlug AV interoperable solution would yield in the best experience for Pierre as well as the value chain players. Another interesting fact to realize is HomePlug is an already established technology and thus introducing a non-interoperable solution would cause tremendous problems to the non-interoperable solution.


b. Jean, who is Pierre’s best friend, has IPTV service from “PT”. “PT” is the largest seller of HomePlug Devices and the biggest HomePlug proponent in France because of the ease of installation and the near zero return rate for HomePlug devices. When Pierre plugs in his non-HomePlug/non-IEEE interoperable solution in the socket, it causes interference in Jean’s network. Unaware of what Pierre was doing, Jean calls PT complaining about the problem. Jean mentions that he has been using the PT service for more than 5 years and he has never experienced any problem before. PT checks the network from its side and everything looks clear to them, except for added interference. Not knowing where the added interference is coming from PT sends the technicians to check for it. By that time, Pierre was frustrated and he had removed his non-P1901/non-IEEE interoperable solution out of the outlets. Thus, the line had become clear and the technicians could not find the problem. Jean had good service now. Pierre’s effort to use non-HPAV/ non-IEEE 1901 interoperable solution caused PT to send their technicians to the field handle the phone calls, address the customer’s woes- all resulting in added expenses for PT.

The above use case demonstrates the importance of interoperability for the existing customers and his service provider. The above use case is realistic as it would be hard to control users buying the adaptors from the retail market. This would cost significant amount of time and money for the Service Providers, grievance to the customers for no obvious fault of theirs. This will result in very bad reputation for the non-HPAV/non-IEEE 1901 interoperable solution.

HomePlug currently has sold more than 35 million chipsets and is on course to selling more than 200 million chipsets by 2013 [Source: iSuppli Wired Communications Q4’08 Topical Report].
If a non-HPAV / non-IEEE 1901 interoperable solution enters the market it not only results in degraded performance but also causes interference to the deployed HomePlug chipsets.

Thus, “interoperability” is not a “good-to-have” requirement, but a “MUST” requirement for success of power line technologies and for that matter the home networking technologies. IEEE 1901 has realized this market reality.

Posted by P. Raj