[Swprograms] BPL in Texas - from Houston Chronicle.com

["Keith Anderson" <kmanderson4@xxxxxxx>]

BPL comes to Texas, Burnet is a small town located northwest of Austin,
Texas' state capital.

 http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/business/2919786

 Nov. 26, 2004, 4:59PM


  Texas town gets Net over power lines
> ------------------------------------
>
> Associated Press
>
> BURNET -- High-speed Internet service is coming to about 120 homes in
> this town of 5,000 using a novel technology that connects residents to
> the Web through power lines.
>
> Broadband Horizons, which provides Internet access to about 6,000
> customers in rural parts of Central Texas, is paying most of the
> estimated $50,000 cost to install a network in a neighborhood of
> Burnet, about 40 miles northwest of Austin.
>
> Once the system is in place, scheduled by year end, they say that
> houses will connect by plugging a simple modem device into a wall
> socket.
>
> Companies have been trying to develop the technology -- called
> broadband over power line, or BPL -- for nearly a decade, and now the
> technology is being tested in a few places. The city-owned electric
> utility in Manassas, Va., launched a pilot project last fall.
> Ohio-based Cinergy Corp. is also testing a system.
>
> In theory, electric current runs along power lines at low frequencies
> and doesn't interfere with Internet signals at much higher frequencies.
> Advocates say the technology would be a cheaper way to wire rural towns
> like Burnet.
>
> Bob McClung, a Blanco entrepreneur, believes he could provide broadband
> service for about $30 a month with the cooperation of public and
> private electric utilities. He told the Austin American-Statesman that
> the technology could be much more common within a few years.
>
> Some analysts are skeptical, however, noting that cable television
> operators and phone companies have a big head start in building
> broadband networks.
>
> "There are 31 million subscribers to broadband in the U.S.," Bruce
> Leichtman of Leichtman Research Group in Durham, N.H., told the Austin
> American-Statesman. "We are well beyond the early-adopter stage. The
> high-end of the market is pretty well plucked."
>
> Ken Graham, the mayor pro tem, who retired to Burnet in 1999 after
> working in telecommunications, said he doesn't like his slow dial-up
> connection to the Internet and views the broadband pilot as a good
> thing.
>
> "This will enhance our quality of life, very definitely," Graham said.
> "Most people that live in this subdivision are retired professionals.
> They have moved to the small town, but they don't want to give up the
> conveniences that they had."
>
>
> Brought to you by the HoustonChronicle.com
>

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