7.1 Introduction

The creation of standards for customer premises equipment (CPE) is considered as a key driver to enabling the availability of appropriate low-cost CPE platforms to connect to BT s future broadband networks. These standards will allow providers to offer a wide range of new services and applications to be delivered to a connected broadband home.

CPE standards will help to drive the convergence of the broadcast, telecommunications and computer technologies, enabling service providers to offer bundled service offerings (including video, data and voice) to the consumer. It is essential that the emerging standards for broadband CPE are compatible with standards for broadband xDSL multiservice networks.

These standards will benefit all sectors of the broadband industry, including consumers, equipment suppliers, network operators, broadband service providers and regulators. Of course, it is also important that these standards do not stifle innovation, and that suppliers can still innovate through product and service differentiation.

This chapter describes current BT standards activities in the areas of broadband CPE, in particular standards for broadband set-top boxes (STBs) and in-home networking. A number of activities in relevant standards forums are described, in particular CPE activities in the Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB) Forum [1] and the Full Service-VDSL (FS-VDSL) Forum [2].

7.2 Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB) Forum

The DVB Forum is an industry-led consortium of over 300 broadcasters, manufacturers, network operators, software developers, regulatory bodies and others in over 35 countries committed to designing global standards for the delivery of digital television and data...