The alliance's objective is to enable and promote rapid availability and adoption of cost effective, interoperable and specification-based home powerline networks and products enabling the connected home.
Home networking via powerlines uses existing power outlets throughout the home.
Powerline networking advantages include worldwide availability, cost effectiveness and ease of installation. The convenience of connecting any device through a power outlet will enable exciting new products with breakthrough levels of performance, delivering entertainment, information access and telephony services. New multimedia and broadband capabilities, announced almost daily, have created increasing awareness and momentum in the consumer market for viable home networking solutions. Microsoft applauds the HomePlug Powerline Alliance in its efforts to create standards that will help make the digital home a reality. HomePlug is taking the necessary step of combining broad industry support with a unified specification for powerline networking.