From The Online Reporter
China is developing its own technology called HiNOC for using coax to connect each individual residence within an MDU to the MDU’s fiber broadband. We call that a broadband extender because it extends the reach of the fiber broadband and connects the residence to the Web.
It extends broadband’s reach within the MDU but not within the residence where traditional home networking connect the household’s devices to each other and to the extender. Entropic, Broadcom and Qualcomm Atheros are already selling to Chinese cablecos, via network gear makers, Ethernet-over-Coax (EoC) extender chips called c.LINK, CDOCSIS and HomePlug EoC respectively.
However, China is developing its own EoC technology because:
- It has a bigger need for that than the rest of the world combined.
- The three technologies offered by American-chip makers are not industry standards but are modifications of other standard:
-CDOCSIS from Broadcom is a variation of the DOCSIS standard
-c.LINK from Entropic is a variation of MoCA
-HomePlug EoC from Qualcomm Atheros is a variation of HomePlug.
- Because they aren’t industry standards and, so far as we know, the chips for each of them come from only their originators: Broadcom, Entropic or Qualcomm Atheros. That means a single source for each, something companies and countries try to avoid so as to encourage downward pressure on prices and to encourage innovations and discourage potential monopoly abuses.
- China has long wanted to develop its own technology standards such as it did with its own version of Blu-ray.
Some time ago Chinese companies embarked on developing an extender standard called HiNOC (High Performance Network Over Coax).
Several major Chinese companies are backing HiNOC including chipmaker HiSilicon, previously Huawei chip design operations, and the CE giant Haier, which has entered the US market with a line of TV sets, appliances and other CE gear. Haier says Euromonitor International 2011 ranked it as the world’s number one brand in appliances. It has more than 80,000 employees, distributes products in more than 100 countries and its total revenue exceeded $23 billion in 2011.
A new version called HiNOC 2 is being developed even though most of the network gear currently being sold has chips for HomePlug EoC, CDOCSIS or c.LINK.
HiNOC 2 is said to be much faster with speeds at the head end up to 1 Gbps, which will connect to HiNOC modems that have about 100 Mbps. A technology that’s called orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) will be an important element of HiNOC just as it will be in the cablecos upcoming DOCSIS 3.1.
Entropic thinks it has a long term advantage. Its c.LINK technology, like HiNOC, uses high spectrum instead of the low and noisy bands that CDOCSIS and HomePlug EoC use.
The first version of HiNOC is still in the prototype and test phase. Entropic was not involved in its development.
Entropic has said clearly that it is supporting SARFT in the development of the spec for HiNOC 2. Entropic says its high spectrum technology would fit well in what the Chinese companies want to have.
However, it takes a long time to go from developing a standard to shipping products. We estimate that the earliest HiNOC 2 products will be on the market is probably 2015. We think Entropic will be one of the first to produce HiNOC 2 chips.
In the meantime, Entropic is not sitting on the sidelines. It is deeply involved in selling its c.LINK technology to cablecos that are in the process of selecting products from various equipment makers. Entropic’s c.LINK 1.1 chips are in equipment that several Chinese cablecos have announced that they are using:
- Chengdu MSO, which offers services to about four million residences
- Tianjin Broadcast and TV Network, which has about three million pay TV subscribers
Ben Chan, Entropic’s director of marketing for its access product line, says Entropic-based gear has other wins but they are not yet announced. ....
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