These articles are several months old -- is there a particular reason that
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----- Original Message -----
From: "Shreyas Pandit" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Monday, February 06, 2006 1:36 PM
Subject: [telecom-cities] First Large BPL Network Powers Up
http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=82017&print=true
First Large BPL Network Powers Up
OCTOBER 07, 2005
In the year since the FCC gave broadband over power line (BPL)
technology the nod, it has had mixed results. Today, it got its first
commercial city-wide deployment in the United States. (See Powerline
Ethernet Gets the Nod.)
Manassas, Va., is the first U.S. municipality to cover its entire city
with BPL. (See Comtek Succeeds at BPS.) The 37,000-person suburb of
Washington, D.C., turned on service this week, according to Walt
Adams, VP of Communication Technologies Inc. (COMTek), the company
that operates the network.
In a public-private partnership, COMTek and the city of Manassas
shared the costs to deploy the service, and they will share the
revenues as well. "The city is a landlord, as well as a services
vendor to us," Adams tells Light Reading.
The city hangs COMTek's BPL devices from power poles. In exchange for
that -- and the network itself -- COMTek gives the city a 10.5 percent
cut of all residential revenues and a 21 percent cut of all commercial
broadband business it generates. "Those percentages slide up as
penetration increases," Adams says.
The Manassas network so far has passed 12,500 households. It has 700
subscribers, and Adams says COMTek is on pace to add about 100 each
month. Those subscribers are getting anywhere from 300 to 800 kbit/s
of data-only bandwidth for about $29 a month.
COMTek is negotiating to deliver BPL services for nine other investor-
owned utilities, municipal-owned utilities, and other entities. The
company is close to providing VOIP over BPL soon. And Adams says that
speeds up to 1 Gbit/s could be possible over BPL in the next few
years, which would enable IPTV and other services.
Elsewhere on the BPL front, however, the signals are decidedly mixed.
In the past 90 days, one BPL equipment firm has received a load of
funding from big investors, one major market BPL trial was called off,
and one industry consortium held out new hope for technology standards.
All BPL networks are different, and power grids vary widely in regards
to throughput, equipment required, and other factors. In the Manassas
network, it costs COMTek, which uses equipment from Main.net
Communications Ltd., between $65 and $100 to pass a home and anywhere
from $275 to $1,000 to service one.
One large barrier to the development of the market is a lack of clear
standards. Without technology standards in place, there's very little
unity in the BPL equipment provider universe, Adams says, and
providers "don't have mass-market economics working in their favor
when they buy equipment."
Those factors appear to explain why PPL Telcom LLC is ending its
Lehigh Valley, Pa., BPL trial on October 31. "While our market trials
indicate that BPL technology is promising, the combination of a
competitive marketplace and the need for significant scale has led us
to the decision not to proceed as a retail communications service
provider," said David Kelley, PPL's president, in a statement. (See
BPL on Trial.)
That scale problem is on its way to being addressed as the HomePlug
Powerline Alliance recently boasted that it now has 50 member
companies and is broadening its scope to work towards some kind of
interoperability among the different kinds of BPL gear out there.
There are fewer than 10 working commercial BPL deployments in the
U.S., and those are all small operations, covering only certain
neighborhoods or business districts. And there's apparently been
little in the way of financial success.
Regardless, investment is still flowing into the BPL equipment sector.
Just over a month ago, BPL gear maker Intellon Corp. raised $24.5
million in new funding from several investors, including BCE Capital,
Goldman Sachs, Intel Capital, and Motorola Ventures.
Current Communications Group LLC also announced new funding from
Google (Nasdaq: GOOG - message board) and The Hearst Corporation. (See
Google Backs Powerline Carrier.)
Ultimately, though, BPL faces a quandary common to other broadband
methods, and its critics have been a vocal bunch. (See Cisco CTO Whips
WiMax and BPL's Parmenides Fallacy.) Because it typically requires
packet regeneration every three-quarters of a mile, according to
Adams, the ideal neighborhoods for BPL are upscale suburbs, the ones
most likely to already be blanketed by DSL coverage and targeted for
fiber-to-the-home build-outs.
— Phil Harvey, News Editor, Light Reading
