Broadband Over Power Lines

Industry Overview

Broadband over Power Line (BPL) technology could offer the right balance of cost, convenience and speed to provide affordable and wide coverage Internet access services.  It gives customers high speed Internet access through electrical networks, lower costs are achieved because the service is implemented on standard electrical lines. BPL Internet access will be at 1Mbps, 20 times faster than a standard phone/modem connection.

Most high bandwidth Internet access schemes fail at the point of connection to residences and businesses. The cost of connecting many individual points usually overwhelms the project. BPL services are already connected to almost all residences and businesses through electrical lines, thus making the service more economical for both providers of the service and customers of the service.

Using electrical lines also makes the service very convenient. There is no need for the bulky apparatus associated with wireless access. BPL offers very high speed Internet access. Its performance far outclasses phone/modem connections and even ISDN. At 1Mbps, customers of BPL services could explore the Web, talk on the phone, and watch a video-on-demand movie at the same time. All of these services are available through the innocuous looking electrical lines currently in your home. Evidently electrical lines were manufactured with more forethought than phone lines.

Through "conditioning" of the existing electricity infrastructure, electrical utilities can transmit regular low frequency signals at 50 to 60Hz and much higher frequency signals above 1MHz without affecting either signal. The lower frequency signals carry power, while the higher frequency signals can transmit data.

Potential Advantages of BPL Technology

In the BPL model, small LANs are created; they terminate at each local electricity substation. These LANs will share a T1/E1 connection to the Internet, similar to a corporation leasing a T1 line. Individual users should experience tremendous speed increases over conventional 28.8kbs or 56kps dialup connections, even at peak usage.

Potential Extensions to BPL Technology

Since BPL creates a LAN type environment by running IP, people could theoretically control all of the appliances in their home from their PC or a remote device. Each home on the neighborhood LAN would operate as a sub-network of the LAN and each electrical outlet could be treated as a node on that sub-network.

Remote services such as remote metering have already been tested under this model and many more services are possible. Because the service provider can keep track of electricity and bandwidth usage via the network, customers will also be able to monitor their usage, reliably predict billing and keep an eye on household usage (i.e. the teenager’s phone usage).

The BPL Market

Trends in both the electric and telecommunications industry have lead to a climate where BPL should be a big player. These trends include customer demand for affordable and high speed Internet access, deregulation of electrical utilities, and the repercussions of a variety of telecommunications legislation.

The utility industry is facing deregulation in North America, Europe, and some parts of Asia. Deregulation means increased competition in the slow growing electricity market with little protection for utilities. An unenviable position indeed. Consequently, many utilities are actively seeking to diversify into other, more profitable, industries. For many utilities telecommunications and Internet services have been a sensible choice. That option can only become more popular as BPL matures.

BPL offers a deregulated utility several options and advantages. The utility can either lease the rights to implement BPL on its electrical grid or develop the technology itself. The advantages include the low cost of the local loop, differentiating the utility from other utilities, and bundling a variety of services.

Conclusion

BPL technology is an exciting alternative to connecting to the Internet via phone and modem. Though this technology is not commercially available yet, it should be available before other broadband technologies due to the relatively low cost of its local loop. Moreover, its high speeds will provide Internet access, video on demand, local phone, and long distance phone services to customers.

As BPL technology matures, Orbita will provide leading edge solutions to utilities and content providers wishing to use the ubiquitous electric grid to provide advanced IP services.