Russell Haggar, VP Marketing of SiConnect, the leader in multimedia-ready home networking technology, has become Chair of the Promotional Working Group at the Consumer Electronics Powerline Communication Alliance (CEPCA).  The appointment was made by the CEPCA Board of Directors.

The Promotional Working Group is charged with promoting the adoption of high-speed powerline technologies and the Alliance’s technical specifications for powerline coexistence.  Established in 2005 by Sony, Panasonic and Mitsubishi, CEPCA has recently had its proposal for technology coexistence successfully pass the initial round of voting by the IEEE P1901 Powerline Working Group developing the future powerline standard.

“As a leading member of CEPCA, SiConnect is ideally placed to understand and help to promote the great work being done by the Alliance,” said Haggar. “The development of a coexistence standard for powerline is essential work at this stage of powerline technology development and it needs to be clearly communicated.”

“The proliferation of conflicting powerline technologies simply prevents any one technology being adopted as an official standard and it’s just impractical to wait for an interoperability standard to eventually emerge.  CEPCA members are fully committed to the standards process but see market opportunities here and now. They recognise that achieving true coexistence between the various approaches in the near term is therefore vital to the growth of the consumer electronics sector in this area.”

Members of CEPCA are: Hitachi, Matsushita (Panasonic), Mitsubishi, Pioneer, SiConnect, Sony, Toshiba, Yamaha, plus nine other companies.  More information about CEPCA is available at www.cepca.org.