The Web: Broadband -- over power lines?

By Gene Koprowski
United Press International

Published 10/20/2004 7:52 AM
CHICAGO, Oct. 20 (UPI) -- Consumers soon may be able to access high-speed, broadband Internet services over their electric power lines as well as their telephone lines.Last week, the Federal Communications Commission moved forward with a policy that, in the coming years, could lead to the development of a national network of broadband-over-power-lines services."This is a great thing to experiment with," said Tim Kurth, a senior vice president with The Lundquist Group, a consulting company in Washington D.C., and a former telecommunications policy aide to House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill."If it takes off, it will be a formidable competitor to DSL and cable," Kurth told UPI's The Web.A number of companies have been experimenting with BPL Internet services, because power lines reach nearly every home and business in the country, and the service is seen as a way to make broadband Internet access ubiquitous, according to FCC officials. This includes phone companies, as well as energy provider Cinergy and technology developer Current Communications. The two companies have formed a partnership that runs a commercial project providing broadband over power lines to 16,000 homes in Ohio. "The technology is in its pretty early stages," Louise Collis, chief executive officer of Willow Computing Technologies, Inc., an IT consultancy, located in Raleigh, N.C., told The Web. The two partners are looking to expand the offering into Indiana and Kentucky later this year. Cinergy has more than 1.5 million customers overall who can be targeted for BPL technology.Another firm, Fine Point Technologies, is involved in "several field trials, investigating the viability of this technology," a spokeswoman for the firm, located in New York City, told The Web.New Mexico Power, located in Fort Worth, Texas, also is experimenting with Internet service delivered via its transmission lines. BPL can enhance competition by providing another broadband alternative, according to a statement issued by the FCC Oct. 14. That fits in with President George W. Bush's goal, articulated this past spring, to make broadband service available to all Americans by 2007. Until now, the communications capabilities of the nation's power grid have largely been untapped, but technologists have dreamed of transmission of voice and information over power lines for at least 10 years.It works via so-called coupler technology, which is placed on the transmission lines, enabling them to convey Internet services by bypassing the electrical transformer and then re-integrating the data signal on the power line as it enters the consumer's home. "You need repeaters every quarter mile along the power line to keep the packets of data moving," Collis explained. "That costs about $1,000 to $5,000 per repeater. But the industry is starting to set standards and that makes this very exciting."There are technical concerns that must be worked out, however, before the technology can be made widely available. For example, Internet services over power lines are known to interfere with ham radio transmissions, and the American Radio Relay League, the organization that represents many ham radio operators, has voiced its concerns with the Bush administration over the issue. ARRL has even asked FCC Chairman Michael Powell -- son of Secretary of State Colin Powell -- to recuse himself on the vote over broadband power lines, out of worry that he has been too enthusiastic about the new technology.Mindful of the ham operators' concerns, and objections voiced by other interest groups, the FCC adopted rules last week that provide for the following:-- technical requirements for broadband over power lines that enable the devices to avoid using a specific frequency, and to adjust remotely, the units at any time; -- bands on the radio spectrum that cannot be utilized by broadband-over-power-line providers at any time; -- measurement procedures for all equipment that uses radio frequency energy to communicate over power lines, and -- consultation requirements for BPL providers with local police and fire departments."There is a lot of potential there for control and monitoring services," Collis said. "When everything is plugged in, you have the ability to reach and utilize information better."Collis said that as soon as this technology is implemented on a wide scale, electric companies can perform meter reading remotely. Moreover, consumers can monitor their heating and air conditioning -- depending on the season -- and adjust it while at the office or on the road, she said. "One degree of reduction can have quite an impact on the system, but not on the person," she said.According to a joint statement issued late last week by the FCC's Powell and Pat Wood III, chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, broadband-over-power-line services should be allowed to develop as the market demands, and with minimal regulation. Powell and Wood urged utilities to pursue the developing technology, because it "will foster great customer options in broadband, provide more efficient management of the power supply system, and ensure increased operational reliability" and security of electric utilities.That will have an impact on the "economic, educational, social, and cultural welfare of the country," the chairmen said in their joint statement. Powell and Wood also said BPL technology would help make networks "self-healing." That is, it would give them the ability to monitor their own problems and fix them remotely. This would improve outage detection, monitoring of remotely placed equipment and supervisory controls in the field, the FCC-FERC statement said.Though homeland security was not mentioned explicitly, Collis said it is a sub-rosa theme behind much of the enthusiasm by the Bush administration for BPL services. There have been concerns, voiced over the past few years, that terrorists could try to strike at the network access points of the Internet in the United States. If they succeeded, they could cripple the economy, leaving much of the nation without online access for days or weeks. "One of the issues that is very far reaching is data redundancy," Collis explained. "It data networks are more redundant, that's a benefit for homeland security."-- The Web is a weekly series by UPI examining the emerging telecommunications phenomenon known as the World Wide Web. E-mail sciencemail [at] upi.com