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Broadband over power lines moving a bit closer to deployment

Posted by Dennis Sellers Jul 18, 2005 at 11:12pm

Could relief be coming to all the poor souls suffering from DUS (Dial-Up Syndrome) be on the horizon? Perhaps. The Houston Chronicle reports that a company called CenterPoint Energy is testing a system to bring high-speed Internet access to consumers through the electric wall socket.

The company that owns the power lines throughout Houston is running a pilot of the system in a Greenway Plaza-area residential neighborhood, offering Internet access at speeds more than one-and-a-half times the speed of services offered through cable modems. The technology, called broadband over power lines, or BPL, has long been used by power companies to monitor and manage their electric grids, Thomas Standish, chief operating officer of CenterPoint’s Electric and Information Technology business, told the Houston Chronicle.

But it wasn’t until recently that it could be used to offer high-quality data, video and voice services. “But where we really think it will work well is in such areas as remotely reading gas and electric meters and remotely turning on and off power service for customers in the competitive retail electric markets,” Standish told the Houston Chronicle.

BPL—which also goes by a few other names and acronyms such as Power Line Communications (PLC), Power Line Telecommunications (PLT) and Power Line Broadband (PLB) is a “carrier-current” system, a term used to describe systems that intentionally conduct signals over electrical wiring or power lines. BPL can be used for Internet access or to interconnect computers or other devices within a building—using that building’s electrical wiring.
When a person moves into a new apartment, it can take up to three days for CenterPoint to execute the new service order. With a BPL system, electric retail providers could potentially turn on the service themselves in a matter of minutes, he told Houston Chronicle.

“BPL gives you an instantly networked home without having to run new wiring,” said Raymond Blair, IBM’s vice president of BPL initiatives. IBM is partnering with CenterPoint to deploy and test the system.

High-speed Internet access is available to more than 95 percent of Americans, according to a recent study by the Federal Communications Commission. That means companies providing the service through a new medium, like power lines, have their work cut out for them when it comes to landing new customers, says Ron Cowles, an analyst with technology research firm Gartner.
“BPL will be a good solution for certain niches, like rural and hard-to-reach areas where other service providers have been more reluctant to go,” he told the Houston Chronicle. “But even BPL can be expensive to deploy in rural areas, much like DSL is for companies like SBC.”

There are three major categories of BPL, according to the AARL (the national association for amateur radio) Web site. Access BPL uses electrical distribution lines, overhead or underground, to provide broadband Internet access to homes and businesses. In-building BPL systems are designed to use the electrical wiring within a building to network computers. Control PLC operates below 500 kHz, and is used by electric-utility companies to control their equipment using the power-lines as transmission lines.
Electric companies have been working on implementing BPL for a decade. Since electrical current is transmitted at low frequencies (10 to 490kHz) data running at higher frequencies (1-30MHz) can travel through the same wire. In theory, you should be able to plug a modem into your wall socket, connect it to your USB or Ethernet port, and get online. In fact, earlier this year, the FCC endorsed BPL, theorizing that it would make high-speed Internet access more widespread than it is now.

Even if 95 percent of Americans do have access to high-speed Internet (which I personally find hard to believe), 5 percent of the U.S. population is a LOT of folks. It’s time to bring on BPL.

Thoughts? Write me at dsellers@macsimumnews.com

Also, don’t forget this week’s Macsimum News poll. We’re asking, “Do you want a video iPod?” The Wall Street Journal is reporting that such a device is on the way, possibly as early as September. Read our article here.