IEEE 1901 Specification Succeeds in First Sponsor Ballot, Ratification in September

Last Friday (April 9, 2010), the results for the first sponsor ballot of the IEEE 1901 Draft Standard came in with over 80% of voting entities approving. This sets the stage for ratification in the Fall of the first global powerline networking standard by a major Standards Development Organization (SDO).

With 1901 joining other highly successful IEEE networking standards (such as 802.3 for Ethernet and 802.11 for WLAN), powerline networking enters a new phase of performance and possibilities. Now, retail vendors, service providers and Smart Grid companies can move powerline product development rapidly forward resting on the firm foundation of a global standard that ensures product interoperability and with the added benefit of full backwards compatibility with the millions of HomePlug AV-based products already in the market today. 
 
This is likely the most significant step in the history of the powerline industry to date and will, no doubt, spur worldwide adoption of this technology.

It is noteworthy that no other standard as complicated as 1901 has ever passed this IEEE milestone (>75 percent acceptance) in a first pass sponsor ballot. This is strong evidence of the maturity of the technology and the very widespread support within the industry.

This extraordinary outcome is due in great part to the very thorough and significant effort put forth by the Working Group and involved member companies. To begin, they performed the hard and tedious work to develop the market requirements for access, in-home and smart energy portions of the standard. Many stakeholders – utilities, service providers, OEMs/ODMs and silicon manufacturers – provided invaluable input and worked tirelessly to improve the underlying technology throughout the process.

Following the requirements process, detailed technical proposals from all the key technology providers were gathered and carefully reviewed and analyzed, including performing simulations and field testing. New inventions were made along the way, some of which were significant breakthroughs for the powerline industry that were later adopted by other SDOs.

Each technical proposal was evaluated by the group, and underwent thorough technical scrutiny, technical evaluations, and simulations. Decisions were based on technical superiority and relevance to market requirements. More than 3000 comments were received during the letter ballot process, and each and every one of them was addressed by the group to improve the specifications.

During the sponsor ballot process, more comments have been received. Many of these represent opportunities to further improve the current specification. The plan is to get the document ready to be sent to REVCOM in August. If this timetable is met, it will be an unprecedented event in terms of the speed with which such a group has readied a specification of this scope and complexity.

It’s hard to overestimate the importance of the 1901 standard for powerline networking, and the hard work and dedication of the many companies and individuals who’ve worked so hard for this well-earned milestone.

Congratulations to all!

P. Raj