CURRENT, Back to the Future with $13M in New Money

After burning $100M from Google, Goldman Sachs and Hearst and then  vaporizing $130M from General Electric, TXU and Sensus Metering Systems, CURRENT announced in a press release a pittance of $13M of new money to make disappear. This time, in addition to existing U.S. investors Associated Partners, EnerTech Capital and Goldman Sachs, CURRENT decided to terrorize the rest-of-the-world snagging  investor Business Media China, and Portuguese investor Espírito Santo Ventures.

CURRENT is pivoting (management speak for "ah shit it is not working let's try something else") from broadband-over-powerlines (BPL) to smart grid to overseas, since BPL for Internet Access networks did not work out so well for them in the USA.

HanFan wishes CURRENT luck and hopes they got their burn rate down from the milk-and-honey days from Google and GE.

In-Stat Predicts G.hn is HPNA 4

And In-Stat confirms mathematics and their dorkness.

This wonderful study, highlighted by himself, Mr. AstroTurf  Alan Weinkrantz
, is promoting HPNA 4 (go HPNA 4), from one of In-Stat brain farts.

The first stinker is "G.hn Poised For Growth" is spot on--starting from zero any shipments is time for champagne (a well known cause of brain farts by-the-way)!

The SBD (silent but deadly) fart is "G.hn will replace HPNA", no stink here.
HPNA 4 is ready to rock your world--or at least the world of ATT and Tommie S's. HPNA is getting long in the tooth so HPNA4 could be useful for ATT.

The "excuse me, are you in the same room as me?", is the  "overtake MoCA by end of year 2015". If In-Stat has the guts to shows up in Las Vegas, HAN Fan is ready to take their money.

HAN Fan, she thinks that Mr. AstroTurf should think before posting or not drink the koolaid and post (HAN Fan is the exception to the rule), and loose the eye glasses (HAN Fan has contacts).

G.hn’s cloudy outlook in the home-networking space

HAN Fan could not contain herself (she's been busy for 9 months) with microm's reporting of G.hn crapness in the market..

microm's headline is factually correct and a few facts in the article are correct: G.hn is "late to market" and "not backwards-compatible" with anything.

But HAN Fan worries about the future of media she sure poor reporting. The highly rated and sometimes respected microm gets key fact wrong. Sigma and Lantiq are not shipping G.hn products. They are figuring out how they don't inter-operate which why there will be "a series of additional G.hn plugfests is being scheduled for this year". Ladies, this is not product, but a gentleman's wet-dream (and ladies don't get any on you).

The worst of microm's reporting is the parroting of the "data throughput of up to 1 gbps" mime from HomeGrid. Every since ITU-R cut the balls off of G.hn by removing the band above 100Mhz, due to EMI issues, G.hn has been a HomePlug wannabe. microm's gest it right when they say g.hn is "the technology is late to market".

The last newby error microm makes is saying HomePlug "has seen some success overseas". HAN Fan this that Om Malik needs to let his staff out more from the good old USA or his native India and figure out that Europe is overseas where HomePlug owns the service provide market--this is not just some success overseas.

Really if old new media like microm cannot keep up... 

Homeplug gets a standard and a bump in speed

PC Mag is reporting that the IEEE has approved the standard for powerline communications called IEEE 1901 and the HomePlug Alliance confirmed they are certifying it. PC Mag says, "IEEE 1901 essentially makes HomePlug AV a universal standard".

All this news was expected by HAN Fan.

HAN Fan was surprised to read that HomePlug AV now has a 500Mbps PHY rate AV+Turbo option while staying compatible with HomePlug AV 200Mbps-cool. Also, that all current HomePlug AV devices will interoperate with IEEE 1901 devices.

The speed increase to 500Mbps PHY rate is even before HomePlug comes out with the HomePlug AV2 broadband specification in 2011.

HomePlug AV Chip Vendors--and now there are four

Sigma's extremely stealthy HomePlug AV chip is now the fourth chip, after Atheros, Gigle, and SPiDCOM, which is certified by HomePlug for compliance to the HomePlug AV specification.

Before reporting this, a sceptical HAN Fan spent time to confirm Sigma's press release as they were MIA from the recent HomePlug Interop Plugfest. Also surprising were the VP claim to have "more than a dozen companies to continue building products with the company's chips" before the chip passed compliance and before any interop tests have been done--gutsy companies.

HAN Fan is even looking more forward to the price war that will come from the competition of multi-sourced standards based products. She now thinks a feature war would be nice too.

MoCA /G.hn come quickly. I need you. Signed Europe.

The European Commission’s latest household communications survey tells us that cable MSO's lost 8 million cable subscribers in a year between 2008 and 2009.

At this rate in 5 years time there will be close to zero cable subscribers in Europe. And there are some big time  talking heads who are talking about the same "cord cutting" happening in the Americas.

HAN Fan was already thinking MoCA's success  in Europe was already a mission impossible, but the way the MSO market is going, they better hurry to Europe.

What about the all singing and all dancing G.hn specification; which will work one day in some future on powerline, phoneline, coax cable, water lines, gas lines, and sewer lines (HAN Fan made-up the last three). G.hn chip makers trying to attack a successful incumbent (see HomePlug) or enter a shrinking  market (see coax)  does not sound very promising. But Broadband over SewerLines (BSL) is surely a good market for them in the coming years--HAN Fan notes that BSL is backed by Google.

1st Powerline Communication Standard is Approved

Seems HAN Fan got her predictions right. The IEEE P1901 WG got their draft approved by the IEEE-SA Standards Board. They say "On 30 September 2010, the IEEE-SA Standards Board approved IEEE Std 1901-2010. Final publication will occur early February 2011."

HAN Fan knows  that the IEEE is really shooting for publication before CES 2011 and they have a booth there only to promote this new standard.

HomePlug is already certifying IEEE 1901 chips. HAN Fan is looking HI and low for signs of life of a G.hn chip-now that it matters to her as it will never work with the three (Atheros, Gigle SPiDCOM) chips on the market. HAN Fan is sad for HomeGrid.

Voyeur K-micro joins yet another HAN forum

 In the HAN market, K-micro just likes to look---they don't have any HAN technologies, but they are members of all the major HAN technologies promoter groups.


MoCA, joined this week.
HomePlug, yep.
HD-PLC, no problem.
HPNA, sure enough.
HPNA++ (aka HomeGrid), oh snap.

And which of these groups K-micro has a chip or even IP for: none, zippo, ninguno.
HAN Fan is confused.

Xpike hits Wireless HDMI market

HAN Fan thinks that the cable replacement market is niche and observes it is a very confused market. But there are times when replacing a $10 HDMI cable with a $600 $160 pair of hot boxes might not be a good idea--like when you need to connect you laptop to that pesky HD projector on the ceiling.

Xpike has introduced a pair of  boxes that "transmit 1080p content up to 30 feet" using WHDI technology. The HDelight MSRP is $179.99, but on www.brite-view.com, it is available for pre-order for $159.99.

HAN Fan congratulates Xpike (aka brite-view)on the excellent price point for a bleeding edge complex product. If there is a non-niche cable replacement market, then these guys have product that will start to prove it (or not).

The transmitter is USB powered which is very neat idea. The receiver has a 5VDC jack, which should have been USB if the HDelighht was to be totally neat.

HDelight receiver

[If you geeks are using 802.11a or 5Ghz 802.11n, be  aware that WHMI based products can interfere with any WiFi on the 5GHz band. WHMI 2.0 is said to fix this.]

HDelight transmitter

And now for a bit of trash-talk from Xpike comparing wireless cable replacement technologies.

IEEE 1901 now the powerline networking standard

HAN Fan is hearing that this week the IEEE will do the final approval of the  IEEE 1901 specification make it the powerline networking standard. She's also been told that the approval is a done deal and to expect a press release real soon now.

With HomePlug already doing interop certification for IEEE 1901 between three chip vendors, the IEEE needed to hurry-up.