AMSTERDAM – October 22, 2013 – Qualcomm Incorporated today announced that its subsidiary, Qualcomm Atheros, Inc., has introduced a new HomePlug^® AV2 product, the QCA7500, to deliver Gigabit-class performance and optimal coverage throughout the home using existing electrical wiring. The QCA7500 is a highly integrated powerline solution optimized for high performance in a small form factor.  Building on Qualcomm Atheros’ powerline leadership in HomePlug AV and HomePlug Green PHY, the QCA7500 has been validated by real-world testing and product deployments to set the bar for true whole home coverage at a lower cost for service providers.

The QCA7500 offers several features that address growing service provider needs including Gigabit-class speeds over electrical wiring to ensure high speeds in more locations for whole home IPTV, over-the-top (OTT), and/or video-on-demand (VOD) video distribution, while doubling the coverage boost over current HomePlug AV products. The QCA7500 also serves as a high bandwidth backbone, ideal for extending carrier-grade Wi-Fi connections everywhere in the home. Additionally the solution supports TR069 remote management support, giving service providers the convenient tools to run diagnostics and manage customer accounts remotely. Based on the HomePlug AV2 standard, the QCA7500 is interoperable with HomePlug AV and Green PHY products in the segment and meets global powerline regulatory requirements. 

“With service providers in mind, Qualcomm Atheros developed the QCA7500 to meet our carrier customers’ growing needs for whole home video distribution,” said Todd Antes, vice president of product management, Qualcomm Atheros. “HomePlug AV2 MIMO based solutions deliver drastically better performance and coverage than any powerline product in the space, and we are confident that our solution’s coverage and optimized form factor with power savings will continue Qualcomm Atheros’ leadership in the HomePlug networking segment.”

Key features of the HomePlug AV2 standard include improved peak data rates and expanded coverage enabled by MIMO with beamforming and use of additional spectrum to increase application throughput for multiple HD streams and other applications. The AV2 standard includes mechanisms to efficiently notch tones to comply with various regulatory requirements and at the same time optimize performance. Additionally, power control and power save features manage transmission power and optimize power consumption.

“Interoperability was also a key consideration, thus the QCA7500 integrates seamlessly with our Qualcomm^® VIVE^™ 802.11ac Wi-Fi and Qualcomm Hy-Fi^™ product lines for whole home wired and wireless connectivity,” said Antes.

Qualcomm Atheros is announcing the QCA7500 at Broadband World Forum in Amsterdam, October 22-24. Commercial sampling is expected to begin in Q1 2014.