[Swprograms] Not just electricity in those wires: PPL expands Internet service

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This story was sent to you by: Richard Cuff

Article from our  local fishwrap -- PPL's Emmaus, PA trial was the location where Ed Hare (misspelled in the article) documented the RFI we saw demonstrated at Joe Buch's presentation at the SWL Fest in Kulpsville.

I will contact the article's author and alert them to the local shortwave listenin

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Not just electricity in those wires: PPL expands Internet service 
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It's in fourth market test of broadband over power lines.

By Sam Kennedy
Of The Morning Call

May 2, 2004

More than a dozen electric utilities nationwide are experimenting with the futuristic technology that provides high-speed Internet access, or broadband, through electrical wires and power outlets.

At the head of the pack is PPL Corp. of Allentown, which this month began marketing ''broadband over power lines,'' or BPL, in Upper Macungie Township.

It's PPL's fourth trial. The first two started about a year ago in Whitehall Township and Emmaus, where the service was introduced to customers for free while PPL worked out kinks in the technology. The third was last fall in Hanover Township, Northampton County, where PPL offered the service for a fee in what company officials described as a ''marketing trial.''

The Upper Macungie initiative is another marketing trial. PPL is selling its high-speed Internet access for a base price of about $40 a month.

The progression from technical to marketing trials signals PPL's growing confidence in BPL -- or power line communications, as it's also called -- and moves the company closer to full-scale commercial deployment of the technology.

It's also a milestone in the evolution of BPL, evidence of its transition from the merely experimental to the practical. Indeed, PPL is one of at least three utilities in the country now making money off the technology.

''We're meeting with very good results...and that's the reason we're expanding,'' said David Kelley, president of PPL TelCom, a subsidiary of PPL Corp.

In Upper Macungie, BPL customers get wireless Internet access in their homes. It works like Wi-Fi hot spots, which are becoming increasingly common in airports, hotels and cafes, as well as inside homes.

The Internet signal is carried to the computer on radio waves that are sent from an antenna attached to a medium-voltage power line outside. The same antenna can serve multiple homes in a neighborhood. The power line is, in turn, connected to PPL's own fiber-optic network. 

PPL has experimented with variations in other locations, including Emmaus. There, some customers connected to the Internet by plugging into a power outlet; the electrical cord doubled as a conduit for the Internet signal.

In either case, no extra wires, such as telephone cords or cables, are required.

A year ago, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Michael Powell described BPL as ''within striking distance of becoming the third major broadband pipe into the home.'' Cable and telephone companies now dominate residential high-speed Internet service, although in some parts of the Lehigh Valley neither is available.

BPL compares well to both alternatives, in terms of performance and price. It's about as fast as DSL from telephone companies, though somewhat slower than the typical cable modem. All three cost about the same.

Even so, BPL has its detractors, the most vocal of which is the American Radio Relay League, which represents 163,000 shortwave radio, or ham radio, operators.

It could disrupt shortwave radio as well as the high-frequency transmissions used for national security, emergency response and an array of other applications, according to the hams, as they call themselves.

When the FCC held a public inquiry on power line communications last year, hams submitted roughly two-thirds of the 4,600 comments. But they were not alone in their alarm.

The National Telecommunications and Information Agency, which represents other federal agencies from the National Weather Service to the FBI that use more than 18,000 high frequency channels, asked the FCC to withhold judgment on BPL until the completion of its own, ongoing research.

Caution was also urged by Aeronautical Radio Inc., which facilitates high-frequency radio transmissions by airplanes on trans-oceanic flights, and by the National Academy of Sciences, which warned that space exploration by radio telescopes was threatened.

The FCC -- whose chairman, Powell, is on the record supporting BPL -- has recently suggested such problems can be resolved by technical solutions.

''We don't believe they will work in all cases,'' said Ed Hair, a researcher for the Radio Relay League, which devotes a significant part of its Web site to the subject.

PPL says it has only gotten four complaints about shortwave interference since starting its trials. The first three were quickly resolved, and the company is working on the fourth, said PPL Telcom President Kelley.

Another concern, according to industry analysts, is BPL often requires expensive, time-consuming upgrades to electrical infrastructure. Such capital expenses can take a decade or more to recoup.

For its part, PPL is closed-mouth about financial and other details, citing the competitive nature of the telecom industry. It will not say how many households it serves or when it might offer BPL to the rest of its 1.3 million electricity customers in Pennsylvania.

Still, the Upper Macungie trial makes PPL's intentions clear. The company -- although known for its steady, risk-averse management -- is marching forward, into uncharted territory.

''We're reasonably motivated to make a respectable business of this,'' Kelley said.

sam.kennedy@xxxxxxxxx

610-820-6517 

Copyright (c) 2004, The Morning Call 

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This article originally appeared at:
http://www.mcall.com/business/local/all-pplmay02,0,5044069.story
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