HomeGrid Forum announced that Liberty Global has become the latest member of the Alliance, alongside other industry leading service providers including AT&T, BT, CenturyLink, China Telecom and Verizon.
Liberty Global has previously partnered with HomeGrid Forum Member Comtrend and Board Member MaxLinear to deploy a Wi-Fi extender solution that uses G.hn technology. The G.hn standard is intended to provide a reliable wired backhaul for Wi-Fi extenders and delivers improved Wi-Fi speeds in rooms far away from the residential gateway. The Wi-Fi extender solutions have been deployed in a number of Liberty Global subsidiaries since 2015 including Telenet in Belgium and Virgin Media in the UK.
Analyst Comment
I have been keen on the idea of G.hn. My home is heavily extended and a number of the ‘internal’ walls are actually very solid, so it is a real challenge to get a good Wi-fi signal around the home, using Wi-Fi alone. That means I have a hybrid of powerline networking (PLN) and Wi-Fi, but it is a bit of a mess. G.hn is said to solve these issues, but initially only available to service operators such as Liberty Global and not available at the retail level. I was tempted to go for a mesh system, but I might need five or six adaptors. However, at IFA, Devolo told me that it has new G.hn-based adaptors coming soon which will combine Wi-fi with PLN. I’m watching! (BR)
