LAS VEGAS—With a cable jack in almost every home, a group of industry heavyweights believes coaxial cable to be the natural choice to wire the digital home of the future.
Wednesday afternoon, the founding members of the recently announced Multimedia over Coax Alliance (MoCA), held a panel discussion here describing how they will bring home networking over coax to market.
“MoCA will specify a multimedia technology allowing customer choice of where to receive their high quality content, and will give service providers greater reach in the home, more efficient installations and increased value of their offerings,” said Mark Francisco, director of engineering for home services for Comcast New Media Development.
The founders of the new alliance include Cisco Systems, Comcast, EchoStar, Entropic Communications, Matsushita Electric (Panasonic), Motorola, RadioShack, and Toshiba. The list contains at least one representative from each part of the service chain, from service provider to retailer to silicon manufacturer.
However, since the member list is restricted to the eight powerhouse companies, audience members at the panel discussion raised concerns that MoCA seems to lack the openness to debate that characterizes similar ventures at organizations like IEEE. David Kummer, senior vice president of engineering and systems at EchoStar, replied that the consortium was starting with an already established technology. “Were trying to fast-track [it],” he said.
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