CableLabs® Announces CableHome™ Initiative and Creation of Royalty-Free IPR Pool

CableLabs® recently announced that more than a dozen key companies have joined a royalty-free pool for intellectual property rights (IPR) in the proposed CableHome™ home networking interface specification. CableHome, the recently adopted name for CableLabs’ home networking initiative, has a primary objective of extending cable services into the home networking environment.

The companies that have signed the agreement, and that are participating actively as vendor authors of the CableHome specification, are: 3Com, Adaptive Networks, Arris Interactive, Atheros Communications, Broadband Home, Broadcom, Cisco Systems, Conexant Systems, DoBox, HighSpeed Surfing, Intel, Intersil, Magis Networks, Navic Systems, Philips Digital Video, Proxim, ShareWave, and Terayon Communication Systems.

These vendor authors have agreed to assist CableLabs and its member companies in drafting a specification for interoperable interface requirements. Products meeting these requirements would allow cable operators to extend the features of the DOCSIS™, PacketCable™, and OpenCable™ platforms across home networks in a transparent fashion to cable customers.

"This is a tremendous step for the cable industry and the CableHome process," said Dr. David Reed, CableLabs Chief Technical Officer and Senior Vice President, Strategic Planning, and the CableLabs staff member who has headed the CableHome project. "CableLabs is confident that by having the IPR pool defined early in the process, it will help reduce the uncertainties vendors may encounter in producing DOCSIS, PacketCable, and OpenCable products for consumers using home networks," Reed said.

CableLabs’ goals in creating the CableHome specifications are to define open interoperable interfaces to which any company can build products and to encourage their broad and uniform adoption across the industry. The CableHome specifications do not require any specific product implementations, thereby leaving vendors free to compete equally in an open and competitive market.

Any company desiring to build DOCSIS, PacketCable, and OpenCable-compliant products will be able to include CableHome interfaces in their products on a royalty-free basis if they sign the agreement. More companies are expected to join. This pool is modeled after the royalty-free pools created for the DOCSIS and PacketCable projects.

The CableHome specification will be released in stages, with the first group of specifications scheduled to be issued in the first quarter of 2001. These initial specifications will define key interfaces necessary to enable vendors to build a broad spectrum of home networking products that will enable the delivery of DOCSIS and PacketCable services throughout the home.