Broadband over power lines closer to reality

Utilities testing another option to deliver Internet.

The 16 police officers in Ossining, N.Y., have an always-on connection to the townspeople. In an effort to step up community policing, Chief Kenneth Donato has instituted a program that calls for his officers to personally meet all 5,500 of the town's residents.

"The officers have personal business cards, and the cards have e-mail addresses," Donato says. "We're encouraging residents to communicate with us via e-mail."

A year ago, such a program would have been difficult to undertake. Until six months ago, the department's only connection to the Internet was a dial-up connection.

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The 16 police officers in Ossining, N.Y., have an always-on connection to the townspeople. In an effort to step up community policing, Chief Kenneth Donato has instituted a program that calls for his officers to personally meet all 5,500 of the town's residents.

"The officers have personal business cards, and the cards have e-mail addresses," Donato says. "We're encouraging residents to communicate with us via e-mail."

A year ago, such a program would have been difficult to undertake. Until six months ago, the department's only connection to the Internet was a dial-up connection.

"It was painful; painful, to say the least," Donato says.

Today, the department has a high-speed, always-on connection. And it's getting it through its power company.

The department is part of a field trial that Consolidated Edison, an investor-owned utility that serves more than 3 million customers in New York City and Westchester County, N.Y., has been running for about a year to deliver broadband via its electrical distribution network. And it's not alone: power line communication (PLC) is being tested in a dozen states in field trials conducted by utilities such as Pepco in Washington, D.C., Ameren in St. Louis and Pennsylvania Power & Light.

The idea of moving data over electrical wires is nothing new. Utility companies have used low-frequency signals sent across their networks to remotely manage equipment and monitor power distribution for years.

In the 1990s, companies such as Nortel and Siemens recognized the broadband potential and launched initiatives to send IP packets over power grids. But technology at the time faced hurdles. For example, to transmit data along noisy electric lines, the signals had to be turned up so high that it interfered with emissions from other devices such as radios and military equipment.

"It's like Wi-Fi three years ago when Wi-Fi was nothing. Now all of a sudden it has become pervasive," says Leif Ericson, manager of business development at Southern Telecom, a subsidiary of Southern Company that provides long-haul and metropolitan dark fiber. "The jury is still out as to whether this will be commercial or not. But we say it's moving in the right direction."

Southern Telecom is conducting a field trial with Ambient in Alabama and recently announced plans to launch another trial with Main.net in Atlanta.

"You have different models of deployment, and you also have different technologies," says Alan Shark, president of the Power Line Communications Association. "The technology is there. The question then becomes: Which technology?"

PLC is a last-mile technology. Data is handed off from a fiber-optic or T-1 line, for example, and injected into a medium-voltage line. In the past, the hurdle for PLC, and the point at which technologies most greatly differ, has been what happens when those signals reach the transformer that converts medium volts into the low volts that are sent into homes and businesses.

Amperion uses Wi-Fi to go directly into homes, avoiding transformers and the low-voltage lines altogether. A broadband connection then is accessed through a Wi-Fi hookup. The others either go around a transformer or through it, sending IP packets onto low-voltage lines and then directly to power outlets. The connection is accessed via a standard HomePlug-certified device that plugs into a wall. The HomePlug Alliance has created a standard for in-home networking using power lines.

Providers claim throughput speeds of between 500K and 3M bit/sec, on par with DSL and cable, but say they can sell the service for $30 per month, less than the $50 per month that DSL and cable users typically pay.

As a result, PLC - or broadband over power line, as the FCC refers to it - is getting more attention as a possible third pipe to deliver broadband access to homes and businesses. The allure of PLC is that the infrastructure is already there - any site with power outlets could be hooked up to a broadband connection.

"It lends itself to what people are hoping to find, and that's a cheap solution without having to do anything different to the wiring in the house or business," says Kathie Hackler, vice president and telecom analyst at Gartner. "And it's getting a lot of interest now because there is so much focus on broadband, both from consumers and from the industry looking at this as something that's going to perk up the communications sector."

FCC Chairman Michael Powell was impressed by what he saw when he got a demonstration of the technology in the Current Technologies/Pepco trial in Potomac, Md. "This is within striking distance of being the third major broadband pipe into the home," he told reporters.

Observers say such a strike could happen soon. First commercial deployments are expected in the next few months, and that could unleash a rush, they say.