The Home Gateway Initiative (HGI) announced it has signed a liaison agreement with the Broadband Forum that will lead to close collaboration by both organizations on the development of standards and specifications for broadband networks worldwide. The comprehensive agreement is designed to enhance the already active cooperation between HGI and the Broadband Forum and allows each organization to provide input, and to release copyright on work-in-progress specifications to the partner organisation as working documents are drafted. 

The result will be acceleration and strong alignment of key specification work within the industry that leads to improvements in the capabilities of customers’ broadband networks. The areas of cooperation by these two groups will be centred on architectural and functional requirements for customer located broadband equipment. HGI’s mission to solve the service, feature and technology challenges in the digital home complements the Broadband Forum’s core competencies in end-to-end architecture and management. The groups agreed to cooperate in addressing quality of service (QoS), software modularity, IPv6, energy efficiency and testing.  Both groups will meet regularly to discuss projects and priorities for industry standards in these and other areas.