DLNA Sets Out MoCA; Plus, Other Home Front Advances

Yes, Virginia, There Is a Multimedia Over Coax Clause

Tushar Saxena, director of home networking architecture and design for Verizon Communications Inc. (VZ), got an early gift this year from the Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA). The powerful standards-forging group added support for the Multimedia over Coax Alliance’s (MoCA) approach, which Verizon has long been using, to the home networking standards it supports. Previously, the group supported only wireless and Ethernet schemes.

“This is a major achievement as the DLNA had supported options, neither of which telcos used for home network deployment,” said an audibly excited Saxena, who is part of the team that built the foundation for Verizon’s pioneering multi-room digital video recorder (DVR) feature for FiOS TV. “This means we could get out of the business of providing CPE devices and the CE industry could start building home networking capabilities and such into devices such as TVs instead.”

An example of such would be DLNA-approved TVs supporting MoCA home networking and housing built-in security cards. “That would be a great step forward for us,” said Saxena. “I think the CE industry is recognizing there’s room for this [opportunity].”

That trend was evidenced at the 2008 Consumer Electronics Show and months later at the annual Cable Show.

For service providers like Verizon, this movement could mean lower costs on both the capex and opex fronts. Operators claim that set-top boxes represent the bulk of their annual capital spending, money that could be saved and/or directed to other efforts, if STB functionality were built into TVs and/or other devices. Greater integration on this front also would simplify remote monitoring (via the Broadband Forum’s popular TR-069 spec) and trouble resolution of the devices, which often results in expensive and resource-devouring truck rolls to residences.

Moving networking and connectivity functions from CPE to consumer electronics devices also could set the stage for additional home services such as video monitoring, media sharing and storage offerings, said Verizon’s Saxena.

“Nobody wants to enter home networking in a proprietary way,” said Saxena. “We want to offer services where the network interacts with content in new ways. [A standard approach] is a good way to mash up home networking and media sharing.”

Added Colin Dixon, director of broadband media strategies at the The Diffusion Group, “There’s a huge amount of complexity in video services today and especially in home networking.”

Fast-expanding home networks, in terms of connected devices, can set the stage for managed home network services from telcos. That is, however, beyond remote monitoring via TR-069.

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