Broadcom Enters Home Networking With MediaShare

Electronic News, Feb 15, 1999

Irving, Calif. -- Having already established a firm foothold in the set- top box market, Broadcom Corp. has decided to expand its consumer offerings, this time targeting the growing home networking market.

Combining its technology experience in cable modem, xDSL, and local area networks (LANs), Broadcom is hoping to make an impact in the home networking market by delivering products that can transmit voice, video and data at high speeds through existing telephone wires.

Broadcom claims its technology will allow consumers to connect various devices to simultaneously access Internet connections, software and computer peripherals. In addition, the technology will support voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) telephony and high quality digital audio/video streaming in the home and small office/home office environments.

More than 80 percent of U.S. in-home networking nodes to be based on phoneline technology in 1999, according to Kevin Hause, senior consumer device analyst at International Data Corp. (IDC), based in Mountain View, Calif.

"Ad the number of homes with multiple PCs grows more than twice as fast as the overall penetration rate of PCs, the opportunity for networks in the home becomes increasingly significant," Hause said. "There are already over 800,000 homes in the U.S. that have installed networks to communicate among computers, other types of devices and peripherals."

Dubbed MediaShare, Broadcom claims the home networking technology is more than 10 times as fast as current HomePNA implementations while being compatible with existing Home PNA standards. HomePNA is a standards body designed to specify and certify interoperable in-home networking offerings over existing in-home telephone wiring. Broadcom is a member of HomePNA and is working to standardize the next generation of home networking products.

Other members of the organization include 3Com Corp., Advanced Micro Devices Inc., AT&T Corp., Compaq Computer Corp., Conexant Inc., Epigram Inc., Hewlett-Packard Co., IBM Corp., Intel Corp., Lucent Technologies Corp., and Tut Systems Inc.