Various manufacturers see the potential of HD-PLC, which is data communication using power lines, and are beginning to expand businesses in the field. Of those companies, I-O DATA, a major vendor of PC peripherals is especially focused on HD-PLC. The company has been paying close attention to PLC from its conception. Why did the company choose HD-PLC? What kind of environment is I-O DATA going to offer to users? HD-PLC Magazine interviewed Akio Hosono, President of I-O DATA about their strategies.

•——It seems your company was interested in how PLC (Power Line Communication) works from the very start.

Hosono: Yes. We began researching PLC around 2005. We sell wireless LAN-related products, but it did not seem we could expect sudden growth in the market share. In addition, depending on the structure of the house, wireless LAN connection may not be stable. In the beginning, we thought PLC could to help where wireless LAN has its weaknesses.

•——PLC has many industry standards. Please tell us why you adopted HD-PLC.

Hosono: To tell you the truth, we did not decide on HD-PLC from the beginning. We were convinced that PLC will definitely spread when we researched for ourselves, but it was not easy to settle on which standard should be adopted.

However, the reason we decided to finally adopt HD-PLC is because we thought we could offer reliability to our customers. It is necessary for someone to take lead in continuing work on compatibility issues in order to spread the standardization of such devices. We chose HD-PLC because we felt that we would be able to receive the details of the latest information. Because HD-PLC was a standard which originated in Japan, and because its policy to attach great importance to compatibility was clear, we thought we could offer it to users with confidence.

•——Please tell us the sales situation of the HD-PLC products.

Hosono: It has been progressing smoothly since we released adaptors for HD-PLC as the first product at the end of 2006. What we didn’t expect was that the OA Tap with Noise Filter would sell so much. Because many users were interested in it, we could not supply enough products to the market for a while. I even scolded the person in charge, "Why didn't you make more?” A Noise Filter is a product that prevents noise leakage from household electrical appliances which may interfere with PLC communication. The fact that this noise filter is selling well shows that there is a big demand for PLC among users, and I actually see it spreading in the market.