For all the excitement over the progress of various broadband access plays bridging the last mile to consumers, a perhaps less navigable distance remains inside the home, where consumers need still more connectivity to realize the full promise of triple-play services.

In many early deployments of IPTV service, telcos are completely rewiring homes with Category 5 cable and placing Ethernet jacks near TV locations. While that's fine for small-scale rollouts, it adds significant cost as the service scales into the millions. The number of connections inside the home also is expected to rapidly increase, adding another strike against rewiring.

In addition to a bridge from their PCs and TVs to that new broadband box on the side of their home, consumers will soon look for ways to link the various broadband appliances beneath their roofs, including personal video recorders and more. According to Parks Associates, more than 41 million U.S. homes contained more than one PC at the end of last year (expected to grow to 56 million by the end of 2009), and 75% of all homes (or 80 million) have multiple TVs.

Service providers have a range of strategic options to connect (and connect to) devices within the home, including installing new cabling or wireless equipment or using existing coaxial cable, electrical or copper wires. Each approach is advanced by its own band of proselytizers, all galvanized by the onset of triple-play deployments that include IPTV.

In August, the HomePlug Powerline Alliance (HPPA) ratified a new broadband-over-powerline standard for in-home wiring that promised a big leap in bandwidth capacity. The “AV” standard, as it's known, replaces HPPA's previous 14 Mb/s standard (yielding 5 Mb/s throughputs) with a 200 Mb/s one (yielding throughputs between 70 Mb/s to 140 Mb/s).

That advancement — and its implications for potential support of multiple high-definition TV streams simultaneously — provoked a surge of interest from big-shouldered technology firms. Motorola and Intel both quickly joined the HPPA, and Intel's manager of powerline initiatives, Matt Theall, became the group's new president.

Intel plans to use its considerable voice to promote the AV standard, but loud voices can be heard in other camps, too. The same month that Intel joined the HPPA, Cox Communications and Verizon Communications both joined the board of the Multimedia over Coax Alliance (MOCA), the group dedicated to promoting the use of existing coaxial cable to network homes. MOCA, which previously was viewed as a cable-centric group, is now heavily promoting its technology, which can provide 100 Mb/s data rates to the telco community.

Meanwhile, the Home Phoneline Networking Alliance (HPNA), a group that promotes technologies that use existing copper phone lines for in-home networking, is trying to get its own piece of the triple-play market. In May, the International Telecommunications Union approved a new specification, G.9954 (more commonly called HomePNA 3.0) that specifically targets triple-play services, with quality of service and speeds up to 240 Mb/s.

All three groups, if pressed, will politely claim superiority. HPPA points out that power outlets are more plentiful than coax lines in American homes. MOCA touts the prevalence and robustness of its own medium, pointing also to concerns that powerline broadband is subject to interference from the use of other electronic devices. And HPNA skeptics point out that, in many homes, phone jacks are not located near TVs.

Kurt Scherf, vice president and principal analyst with Parks Associates, believes coax will be popular as a secure, reliable backbone that's already present in most every home in the U.S. Overseas, where coax is less ubiquitous, powerline and other technologies may win out, he said.

Many U.S. carriers have placed early bets on one of two coax technologies (the other being from Coaxsys). However, Verizon's involvement in MOCA need not exclude its use of HPPA or other technologies, said Brian Whitton, Verizon's executive director, who sits on the MOCA board. The carrier plans to continue evaluating other media and technology for home networking, though it is committed to the precept of adding “no new wires.” HPPA's approach is “not ruled out, but not ruled in, either,” Whitton said.

“The problem I've always had with HomePlug is: The [bandwidth] numbers you hear about are peaks,” he said. “Will I get those bandwidths or is it more likely I'll get extreme variation in behavior? Until recently, we've been concerned more about the latter. Now, when you get to rates of 200 Mb/s to 300 Mb/s, do you get to a point where you still have, after all the variability, a minimum amount of available bandwidth? That's something we'd test to validate.”

SBC Communications declined to talk about the inside wiring plans for its Project Lightspeed fiber-to-the-node initiative. A spokesperson said only, “We are working through various scenarios for our home networking solution, so we can't go into a lot of detail at this time.”

When Verizon installs FiOS today, it most often runs new Cat 5 cable from the optical network terminal on the side of the house to the home router inside. Because its initial deployment is using RF video, it also can use existing coax just like a traditional cable operator. Soon, perhaps next year, the company will start using coax for that connection to the router, which is expected to reduce the cost of deployment. Verizon also offers wireless home networks today, but only for FiOS' high-speed Internet service, not the video services recently launched in some markets.

“Increasingly more customers are opting for wireless,” said Whitton, suggesting that users like the way that room-to-room mobility lets them take advantage of their laptop's portability.

But although consumers may be asking for it more, whether they remain happy with wireless once they've tried it is another question. Parks Associates reported late last year that about 10% to 20% of wireless home-networking customers returned the gear dissatisfied.

“There's limitations both on rate and reach,” Whitton said. “We give [customers a list of answers to frequently asked questions] that says, ‘If you want to sit at your deck or near your pool, you can use larger antennas or range extenders.’ At the end of the day, wireless is not deterministic. It simply doesn't behave the same way all the time.”

Recently, a number of start-ups such as Ruckus have unveiled wireless set-top boxes that they claim will support the same bandwidth required for IPTV. However, wide scale deployment of those devices would appear to be at least five years away, said Frank Weiner, vice president of field marketing for Calix.

“The jury is still out on what impact wireless solutions are going to have on whole-home networks, particularly those that are intended to distribute high-quality content such as TV and video,” Parks' Scherf added. “I think carriers are waiting to see how quickly next-generation wireless standards arrive.”

Once carriers get comfortable with the network inside the house, they should start saving their energy for the next, and most difficult, battle in home networking: the fight to allow consumers to share digital content across multiple devices and interoperate consumer electronics from competing companies. The problems in that arena are more political than technological.

Parks analyst Michael Cai recalled crossing paths at a recent industry gathering with a senior Sony executive, who is also a chairperson of the Digital Living Network Alliance — a group attempting to get companies from the mobile, PC and consumer electronics industries to allow their products to seamlessly exchange content and share applications. “I told him, ‘If you can pull this off — all these devices interoperating — I'll vote for you to replace Kofi Annan [at the United Nations],’” he said. “It's that complicated.”

Who's behind the technology?

Partial list of vendors supporting various in-home network solutions and carriers offering services using them

MOCA

Verizon
Cox Communications
Entropic Communications
Linksys
Motorola
Toshiba
Comcast
Echostar
Panasonic
Radio Shack
Actiontec
Mototech
Hitachi
Netopia

Coaxsys

Alloptic
Calix
ConFocus Technologies
Occam
Pannaway
Amino
NTS Communications
Consolidated Communications
Hargray Communications
McDonough Telephone
Liberty Communications

HPNA (offering service)

BellSouth
EarthLink
SBC
Time Warner Cable
Verizon

The options

HomePlug Powerline Alliance 200 Mb/s peak rates

Home PNA 3.0 up to 300 Mb/s peak rates

Multimedia over Coax Alliance 100 Mb/s consistent rate

Wireless 10 Mb/s to 15 Mb/s