The Home Gateway Initiative (HGI) has today announced that it will be working towards a set of specifications that will outline energy saving solutions for the home gateway.

Representatives of the industry body's worldwide member companies will gather later this month at HGI's 13th quarterly meeting, in Florence, Italy, where the topic will be high on the agenda.

The HGI will be basing its specifications on the EU Code of Conduct on Energy Consumption of Broadband Equipment, which sets out the basic principles to be followed by all parties involved in broadband equipment, operating in the European Community, in respect of energy efficient equipment. As usual, the HGI will be working closely with Standard Developing Organizations, including ITU-T and ETSI (TISPAN and AT-TM), who are already working on this important item.

"Reducing the energy consumption of broadband communication equipment without impeding the fast technological developments and the service provided has been at the forefront of operators' minds for some time now," explains Paolo Pastorino, Chief Technology Officer at the HGI. "Energy conservation is a major discussion point globally and in the telecoms industry, and, with representatives from major operators and manufacturers present, our 13th meeting will be the perfect arena for these issues to be discussed."

The HGI has several objectives that will be addressed during the meeting. Top of the agenda is for the HGI to determine the requirements for an energy efficient home gateway; to establish service modes; mapping the 'service modes' into 'operation modes' and estimating the actual realistic energy consumption corresponding to these modes; and expanding on the EU Code of Conduct for home gateway specific functions.

The HGI was founded and launched by nine telecom operators (Belgacom, BT, Deutsche Telekom, France Telecom, KPN, TeliaSonera, NTT, Telefonica and Telecom Italia) in 2004, and now has members from five continents, representing the entire spectrum of actors in the broadband home arena. The main tasks of the HGI are to establish home gateway-related technical and interoperability specifications and provide input to standardisation bodies.