Triple Play services, defined as “a bundle of video, data and telephony down a single broadband connection,” have grown rapidly in the last few years. The number of households connected to broadband services stands at over 250 million worldwide and is growing rapidly, with over 500 million broadband households expected by 2010. Broadband-enabled services such as IPTV (Internet Protocol-based Television), Video-on-Demand (VoD), high-speed Internet access, Personal Video Recorders (PVRs) and VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) are becoming increasingly common. According to Research and Markets, the number of people worldwide subscribing to Internet Protocol-based TV services will reach 34 million by 2010. This growth is fueled by the increasing competition among service providers as well as innovations in broadband access technologies that opened up the “last mile” (access network) bottleneck, enabling the provision of these services. Service providers typically deliver the advanced broadband services to a single residential gateway (RG) installed somewhere at the customer’s home. As use of these advanced services grows, a need is emerging for a high-speed residential multimedia network that will distribute the functionality of these enhanced services from the RG throughout the house, making them accessible from any device and room in the home.

Concurrently with the development in broadband services, rich-media home entertainment electronic devices are proliferating. Among others, they include personal video recorders (PVRs), DVDs, high-end game consoles, digital audio devices (MP3) and PCs with multimedia capabilities, increasing the number of rich media sources in the home. This proliferation is creating a need to connect all of the various residential media sources together on a single network, so as to enhance the user experience and optimize use of these devices.

Since multi-dwelling units (MDUs) and multi-tenant units (MTUs), such as apartment buildings and condominiums, house a significant portion of the population worldwide, service providers are also seeking cost-effective ways to deliver Triple-Play-capable high-speed broadband access to residents of MDUs.

CopperGate’s state-of-the-art CopperStream™ solutions enable residence-wide distribution and networking of Triple-Play services and other multimedia content, as well as the delivery of Triple-Play broadband services to multiple apartments in MDU/MTU environments.