MoCA begins networking in Europe

A survey for the Multimedia over Coax Alliance (MoCA) has found a viable addressable market segment exists in four major European territories.According to the study, conducted by IMS Research, the UK and France have similar characteristics: 56% of UK respondents said they had two or more coaxial outlets and 27% three or more. In France the comparable figures were 55% and 25%.

Poland had the greatest number of available outlets with 71% with two or more coaxial outlets and 36% three or more. The Netherlands – the most highly cabled market to be surveyed – at the least number of available outlets. 45% of respondents said they had two or more coaxial outlets and 15% with three or more.

Rob Gelphman, Chair, Marketing Work Group, MoCA told Broadband TV News that while manufacturers and operators were confident that MoCA was technically better than other solutions, there was uncertainty as to how many outlets there were in the home. “We didn’t think we would find as many outlets as in the US, but it is more than we thought, and it does change the prevailing presumptions,” said Gelphman. “We also know that it will increase, because more people are adding coax”.

MoCA is now looking to develop interest for its home networking standard in Europe. It works at speeds of up to 175 Mbps across cable, satellite and IPTV infrastructures, but requires specific technology to be pre-installed in set-top boxes. “MoCA is really a point solution, we’ve only targeted high-def video, and we work at a higher frequency range so we don’t get in the way of all the lower frequency devices,” said Gelphman, adding the solution worked with regular coax that was already in the home.

The markets were chosen because of their competitive pay-TV environments, the increasing penetration of HDTV and PVR, the number of TVs per household and high viewing hours.

Current membership of the alliance includes Comcast, EchoStar, Cisco, ADB, Broadcom and TI. Gelphman is now looking to add a European operator members.