The Universal Powerline Association to Endorse the Opera Specification and Announce Launch of Digital Home Industry Standardization Process.

HANNOVER, Germany -- At a Board of Directors Meeting Held in Hanover During CeBit, UPA Agreed to Endorse the Opera Specification and to Launch a Digital Home Industry Standardization Process

The UPA has reached agreement on the process for the preparation of the specification for its Digital Home Standard (DHS) and invites all interested parties to participate in the process. The DHS standard due in Q2 2005 will be used to design integrated circuits for voice, video and data distribution including multi-stream entertainment such as HDTV; SDTV; and Triple Play services.

As an organization powered by open communication, UPA has agreed to submit a draft of its in-home standard to industry technology leaders and customers for valuable input. At present, pre-standard units are available as well as UPA pre-standard field data. Industry leaders are currently involved in the process of creating the digital future of powerline networks, and influencing the standard to best suit market needs. UPA's Digital Home standardization committee organizes the whole process. The UPA is inviting all In Home networking and Consumer Electronics vendors, interested utilities and telecommunication companies to join its Committees. To participate in the digital home standardization process, interested parties are invited to contact: [e-mail], Chairman of the Digital Home Standardization Committee.

In a separate initiative the UPA Board has endorsed the specifications for powerline communications developed by the EU sponsored project Opera. To participate in this processinterested parties may contact [e-mail] (Chairman of the co-existence Committee) and [e-mail] (Universal Access Standard). The endorsement of the Opera specifications is fully consistent with the targets of the Association:

--the UPA is aiming at the shortest time to market. Moving on with a broadly recognized efficiency, the Opera project has already announced a specification. By endorsing this specification, the UPA benefits from the outcome of a successful, rigorous and completed process that included a call for proposals, independent selection and test of state of the art PLC technology.

--the Opera project is a market driven initiative including 36 companies, 10 leading utilities and ISPs among its membership. Among them are Iberdrola, EDF, Endesa, ENEL, ONI, Linz and MVV who have been leading the most significant PLC deployments in Europe since 2001.

--The OPERA selection process chose a proven technology as its baseline: the selected 200 Mbps PHY and MAC developed by chip Supplier Design of Systems on Silicon (DS2) has already been successfully deployed in the field.

--The UPA aims to ensure co-existence/interoperability of it DHS (Digital Home Standard) with the OPERA Access-BPL Standard.

The UPA Access Standardization Committee will validate the application of the OPERA baseline on the American and Asian markets with leading telecommunication players and will provide feedback and input to OPERA for a worldwide and universal industry standard to be published before the end of 2005. UPA will support the OPERA initiative to promote the Access-BPL standard in ETSI and IEEE with the support of the whole Industry, and the same procedure will be followed for the DHS standard mentioned above.

"Following the launch in January of an ambitious initiative to issue a coexistence standard between inhome technologies and universal access technologies that will be ready in May 2005, I am satisfied with the current momentum which testifies to the fact that the UPA is the most reliable and market focused standardization association for PLC," said Eric MOREL, Chairman of the UPA. He added: "All UPA industry standards and associated certification will be openly and freely available and the UPA will develop for its members an industry label assuring them to provide their customers with a proven expected level of functionality and quality, harmonized with standards and regulations."

About OPERA

"OPERA, "Open PLC European Research Alliance", is an Integrated Project including 36 companies sponsored and co-financed by the European Commission 6th Framework Program under the strategic objective "Broad Band for all" in the Information Society Technologies (IST) Priority".

Additional information about OPERA is available at http://www.ist-opera.org/

About the Universal Powerline Association 

The Universal Powerline Association (UPA) is an International not-for-profit trade association working to harmonize global standards and regulations in the fast developing powerline communications market. The UPA aims to catalyze the growth of PLC technology by delivering UPA certified products that comply with the specified standards and regulations. All products and applications designed around UPA guidelines will communicate. This can range from simple coexistence to full interoperability. Products and applications range from, the most performance demanding back haul optical switch to the customer premise equipment that delivers broadband access power line or Broadband Powerline (BPL) or one of the myriad of home networking appliances; from power line to Ethernet gateways for triple-play and home-networking applications, to consumer electronics appliances including Media Centre PCs, Digital TV, MP3 players, networked set-top boxes and PVRs; indeed all types of audio or video appliances. UPA provides all PLC players the opportunity to respond to key customer expectations with open standards, based on interoperability, security and coexistence and supported by exclusive and independent certification, the only global guarantee of quality and confidence for high-speed power line technology available today. Members of the UPA include Ascom, Ambient Corporation, Corinex Communications, DS2, Electricite de France, Itochu Corporation, Ilevo (Schneider Electric Powerline Communications), Sumitomo Electric Industries  and TOYOCOM.