Amedia Networks today unveiled plans for a new gigabit passive optical network (GPON) home gateway designed to replace both broadband home routers and the optical network terminals (ONTs) that typically sit outside the home in PONs.

The 2.5-inch-tall HG-G1000 gateway (essentially the same product as its current VDSL gateway but with GPON interfaces) would sit inside subscribers’ homes, directly receiving access network fiber the way ONTs do today.

Amedia hopes the industry’s transition from outside ONTs to in-home devices helps foster greater multi-vendor interoperability between central office and customer premises gear, potentially driving down the overall cost of PONs. “We’re forging a new path here, saying we want to be there when OLTs [the central-office-based optical line terminals] can be agnostic from ONTs,” said Frank Galuppo, Amedia’s chief executive officer.

The HG-G1000 won’t be available until the middle of this year, but Galuppo said the company was prompted to announce its plans now after seeing a rival, Actiontec, announce at last month’s Consumer Electronics trade show that it would begin shipping a GPON gateway in the second half of this year.

Amedia’s GPON gateway will plug into standard home outlets and include a backup battery with about 4 to 8 hours worth of power. It will also include an integrated third-party storage device capable of holding 200 GBs of customer video, photos and music. “You could continue to use your PC as your storage device,” Galuppo said. “We’ll be able to bring content from your PC and route it to the TV screen if that’s where you want to watch it.”

Some questions remain regarding specifics of the gateway. For example, Galuppo doesn’t know whether it will include triplexers to receive RF video. Verizon Communications’ current fiber-to-the-premises network includes RF video, but the necessary triplexers add significant cost to the system.

The GPON gateway will be equipped with multimedia over coax technology “or” home phone line networking, Galuppo said. Amedia will add ultrawideband wireless capabilities to the gateway courtesy of its partner, Tzero Technologies, when the technology becomes available in the second half of this year, Amedia said.