The ITU-T G.9960 specification will lead to the development of new processors, claims the ITU that will allow blisteringly fast communication in the home.

EE Times claim that if all goes well, a wide range of companies active in the standard - including Atheros, Coppergate, Infineon, Intel, Intellon, Panasonic, Texas Instruments and others - could ship chips by mid 2010. A broad group of vendors formed the HomeGrid Forum in May to throw their support behind the G.hn standard.

They say that the market for wired home networks has been fragmented to date with one or more different standards for each type of wiring. That fact has made some systems makers and service providers skittish about committing to any one technology, an impediment chip makers and analysts believe the new standard could eliminate.

In the absence of a wired standard, Wi-Fi has become a dominant home network technology. However, to date carriers have said it is not up to the job of carrying video across the home.

The G.hn standard specifies physical layer data rates up to a Gbit/second. It is expected to enable data throughput at rates up to 800 Mbits/s over coax lines.

Many analysts were quick to praise the ITU milestone