News about People and Companies influencing The Broadband Home

Each month, we collect miscellaneous happenings, studies, trends or observations you might have missed. This month's briefs focus on the new P4P protocols, the demise of Pivot, the uncertain future of US access BPL, and a few items to lighten your day.

The rationale for G.hn is simple: it's not possible to grow a worldwide market with five mutually-incompatible "existing wiring" technologies that often interfere with each other. For over two years there has been a standards effort in the ITU to create a common standard for home networking over existing wiring. Big players like Intel and TI are enthusiastic about G.hn but saw a need to form a companion organization, HomeGrid Forum, to accelerate the standard and make an early start on interoperability testing and certification.

The latest incarnation of Clearwire brings together a critical mass of players to roll out a national WiMAX network. We have been following Clearwire since Version 1.0 more than five years ago.

We tested a Pinnacle PCTV HD Pro Stick, a high-definition PC tuner for broadcast digital TV in a package the size of a flash drive.

We received emails about our April articles regarding Internet content on the TV and on diagnosing broadband problems. Both articles seem to have had personal resonance for our readers.

There are upcoming shows for interests as diverse as the cable industry, home telehealth and IPTV. We'll be attending a couple of these.