Under the distracting glare of its sister technology, municipal Wi-Fi, broadband over power lines glows hot. December 19, 2005
With so much of the communications industry’s attention focused on municipal Wi-Fi deployments, broadband over power lines, the once-sleepy technology that allows for broadband communications over electrical utility networks, has struck again—this time in the state of Texas. Current Communications, a privately held provider of BPL services, said on Monday it is partnering with TXU Electric, one of the largest electric utilities in the United States, to enable broadband communications over the electrical network in the Dallas-Fort Worth area of Texas. According to the plan, BPL communications will be available to about 2 million homes and businesses in the highly populated two-city “metroplex” and adjacent communities by the end of 2006. BPL has been off to a stumbling start in the U.S., with occasional bursts of activity and attention interrupted by extended periods of inaction. But the technology, which uses the electricity grid and wiring in individual homes and businesses as an access route to the Internet, has been a relative blur lately. It is the other triple-play candidate for voice, data, and video after DSL and cable modems. Investment Spark
Back in July, Google, Goldman Sachs, and Hearst announced a $100-million investment in Current, which is based in Germantown, Maryland. Current offers a commercial BPL service in Cincinnati, in conjunction with Cinergy Broadband, which is part of the energy conglomerate Cinergy (see TechSpin: Google Bets Electric).
In October the city of Manassas, Virginia, became one of the first municipalities in the U.S. to offer a commercial-grade, non-pilot BPL service. The company behind the service is Communications Technologies of Chantilly, Virginia (see U.S. City Lights up BPL).
At the time of the launch, ComTek said it had already signed up 700 of the roughly 12,500 households in Manassas within the scope of its BPL network and was processing another 500 households that have requested the service. The service is also available to 2,500 businesses in the city.
The company charges $38.95 a month for the service and shares revenue with the city, which owns the municipal power and fiber-optic networks.
In September, Panasonic announced a module and software that will make BPL technology faster than Ethernet and almost as ubiquitous, but less complex than wireless.
Speed Boost
The High Definition Power Line Communication (HD-PLC) evaluation module from the Japanese conglomerate will boost the network speed of BPL to 170 megabits per second (Mbps). That rate will make it faster than most Ethernet networks in the home, which top out at 100 Mbps. It will also beat the speed of the fastest current BPL products by a factor of eight (see Panasonic Speeds BPL).
As part of the Texas deal, TXU will pay about $150 million over 10 years for an ownership stake in Current Communications. TXU will also get a more efficient utility-monitoring system. Current will take advantage of the intelligence it is building into the utility network to install an advanced digital communications network that will allow the utility to monitor its electric distribution. TXU will be able to detect and restore outages more effectively, as well as automate the labor-intensive process of meter reading.
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