Swedish broadband equipment maker Tilgin has launched Simba, a platform for home gateways that can handle gigabit speeds. The availability of cheaper components has made developing Simba possible, the company said on Monday.
Interest in broadband at 1G bps (bits per second) is growing around the world, thanks to cheaper home gateways as well as low-cost network equipment, and growing data volumes, according to Eric Hjelmestam, vice president of solution management and marketing at Tilgin. Thanks to lower component costs, Tilgin can now develop products which cost about the same as ones that top out at 100M bps, Hjelmestam said.
The Simba platform has enough capacity to handle download and upload at 1G bps, or 200M bps if it encrypts the traffic. It has been developed to allow operators to offer triple-play services (TV, telephony and Internet access), and other services including backup, storage, remote access, home control and security, the company said.
Home gateways based on Simba will also be able to run telephony separately from other applications, thanks to an integrated virtualization engine. Running telephony separately will decrease the risk of application conflicts, according to Tilgin.
Tilgin expects the first operators to offer products based on Simba with broadband subscriptions at 1G bps before the end of the year.
Tilgin isn't the only vendor pushing gigabit broadband. In March, Google announced plans to offer people living in Kansas City broadband at 1G bps.
The purpose of the project is to demonstrate what happens when you have gigabit speeds available, Google technology evangelist and TCP/IP co-creator Vint Cerf said in a speech last week. The higher speed can, for example, be used to improve video streaming performance.
Earlier this month, U.S. cable operator Comcast demonstrated a 1G bps connection over a live broadband network by downloading 23 episodes of TV show "30 Rock" -- close to nine hours of content -- in about 90 seconds.
In Europe, BT has announced plans to test broadband at downstream speeds of 1G bps and upstream speeds of 400M bps this year. In Japan and Hong Kong, gigabit speeds are already offered.
Swedish operator Bredbandsbolaget is planning to launch a service this fall, marketing manager Jesper Hedblom said via e-mail.
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