PLC Forum

The PLCforum Association is pleased to invite all market stakeholders to its “Roundtable on European Markets for in-home and access PLC” to be held at the Metropole Hotel in Brussels on March 3, 2005. This half-day event, organised the day before a PLCforum quarterly meeting, is intended to enable attendees to discuss into detail the current and future market opportunities for access and in-home PLC. The open discussion will be introduced by key presentations from industry leaders and followed by a networking cocktail. The Roundtable agenda can be downloaded here and the registration form is available here (no registration fees are requested, but pre-registration, with February 25 as a deadline, is compulsory). Invitations to attend the PLCforum 21st General Assembly and the Working Group meetings organised at the occasion of the quarterly meeting of March 4, can be granted to organisations interested in joining the PLCforum. To access the agenda of this quarterly meeting, please click here. For any further information you may need, please contact us.

The 20th General Assembly of the PLCforum Association, held in Nice on December 6 and 7, 2004, provided members with an opportunity to review the important work done since the September meeting and to carefully plan ambitious activities for 2005:
• The involvement of the PLCforum in several events these last two months (including IQPC annual conference, Net-atHome™2004, IST2004, ETSI PlugTest) allowed to significantly improve the visibility of the PLCforum, and to widely disseminate Association's key messages.
• The PUA White Paper, sponsored by the PLCforum has received a very positive feedback from market stakeholders worldwide: it can be obtained, free of charge, through email to pua@plcendesa.com and will be soon available, for free downwload, on the present web site.
• The work done by the PLCforum and PPC in the OPERA IST Project and focusing on Marketing and dissemination, has been quite intense these last months and fully contributed to the smooth progress of this important Project.
• The PLCforum will increase its expenses of more than 20% in 2005 to allow the Association to develop even more activities for the benefit of the PLC industry. Among these activities: a conference organised in March 2004 in Brussels on "In-home and access PLC markets" and the 3rd "Summit of the PLC Associations" to be organised by the PLCforum during the second half of 2005.
The next quarterly meeting of the PLCforum Association (including the 21th General Assembly and the above-mentioned conference) will take place in Brussels on March 3 & 4, 2005. Invitations to attend this meeting can be granted to organisations interested in joining the PLCforum.
For further information, please contact us.

The 7th edition of the Net-atHome™ conference and exhibition, organised every year by Homega Research took place from Nov. 30 to Dec. 2, 2004 at the Palais de la Méditerranée hotel in Nice, France. Attended by over 260 representatives coming from 25 different countries, the event allowed to precisely review the status and perspectives of the worldwide markets for home networks and gateways, connected appliances and value added services to the home. The PLCforum association has been presented through an exhibition booth and a paper presented during the conference plenary session devoted to “Access Networks & Value Added Services”. This participation was all the more emphasized with a booth presenting the OPERA IST Project, in which the PLCforum association is actively taking part in, and a related paper presented during the conference and devoted to “Trials & Deployments”.
To view the PLCforum & OPERA booths, please click here and here.
For more information on the Net-atHome™2004 event, please click here.

The status and perspectives of the OPERA Project have been highlighted at the annual IST event, held this year in The Hague, the Netherlands, from November 15 to 17. The OPERA booth included into the IST2004 exhibition area welcomed many IST2004 delegates and allowed the OPERA Project coordinator Luis J. Legorburu (Iberdrola Ingeniería y Consultoría) and the OPERA Dissemination WP leader Marcel Graber (PLCforum) to answer a number of questions on PLC status and perspectives, and to convince visitors that the OPERA Project will contribute to a faster development of PLC as a competitive solution to provide broadband Internet access and other services to European homes. A new OPERA brochure has been prepared for dissemination at IST2004 and can be downloaded here as a pdf file. For further information please contact us.

The PLCforum Association is proud to sponsor the 2nd Powerline Plugtests that ETSI is organising at ETSI headquarters, in Sophia Antipolis, France, from Nov. 15 to 19, 2004, and at EDF Bagneux, Paris, France, from Nov. 22 to 26, 2004. As different Powerline technologies exist, the Powerline Plugtests event aims at addressing the performance of the different products and contributing, by a series of technical tests at the event, to identify any technical issues that would prevent the deployment of a genuine PLT market which is currently taking-off. Valuable feedback from this event is expected to the standardization work and to the whole Powerline community. Simple and Complex tests will be performed at ETSI while Indoor and Outdoor tests on real site will be performed at the EDF Bagneux site with the support of EDF. For further information please visit http://www.etsi.org/plugtests/History/History.htm.

During the 19th General Assembly of the PLCforum Association, that took place in Brussels on September 20 & 21, a new Board has been elected, composed of the following persons: Ramiro Alfonsin (Endesa), Chairman - Michel Goldberg (EDF), Vice-Chairman - Johan Bergstrom (Ilevo) - Jorge Blasco (DS2) - Ekkehart von Freydorf (Eichhoff) - Franz Heinzl (Linz AG) - Michael Koch (PPC) - Ulrich Koehler (Intellon) - Masahiro Oya (Mitsubishi El.) - Sergio Rogai (Enel) - Per Wigren (Elforsk) - Amit Yudan (Main.net).
The General Assembly also elected the Chairmen and Vice-Chairmen of its operational structures:
• Marketing Working Group: Johan Bergstrom (Ilevo), Chairman, and Ingo Schonberg (PPC), Vice-Chairman
• Technical and Regulatory Working Group: Victor Dominguez (DS2) Chairman, and Michael Koch PPC), Vice-Chairman
• In-home Special Interest Group: Ulrich Koehler (Intellon), Chairman and Jorge Blasco (DS2), Vice-Chairman
Since a new member has been welcomed during this General Assembly (Telsa), the PLCforum now has 63 members (48 regular members and 15 permanent guests), which represents a net increase of 7 members in 1 year.
At the end of the General Assembly, detailed reports on the work done, during the 2 days, in the framework of the Working Groups have been presented to members by the Chairmen of these groups, together with updates on PUA activities and on the PLCforum activities within the OPERA IST Project. In his concluding address, the PLCforum Chairman, Ramiro Alfonsin, shared with all members his conviction that the year to come was likely to be a key one for the PLC community and that the PLCforum Association would play a leading role in this period. The next quarterly meeting of the PLCforum Association (including the 20th General Assembly) will take place in Nice on December 6 & 7, 2004. Invitations to attend this meeting can be granted to organisations interested in joining the PLCforum. For further information, please contact us.