[EIDXA] Fw: [BPL-LOCAL:94] FW: CommDaily - 08/20/2004 (BPL)

[Jim Spencer]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Hare, Ed W1RFI" <w1rfi at arrl.org>
To: "bpl local reflector" <bpl-local at reflector.arrl.org>
Sent: Tuesday, August 24, 2004 10:47 AM
Subject: [BPL-LOCAL:94] FW: CommDaily - 08/20/2004 (BPL)



FRIDAY, AUGUST 20, 2004              COMMUNICATIONS DAILY

Business and Regulatory Issues Slow Commercial BPL Rollouts Faced with
the recent shutdown of at least 3 trials (CD Aug 11 p4), the broadband
over power line (BPL) industry is asserting the technology works, and
delays in large-scale commercial deployments resulted from business and
regulatory issues. Most pilots have moved past the technical stage and
are into marketing trials, said Brett Kilbourne, regulatory dir. Of the
United Power Line Council (UPLC). The "greatest doubts" about BPL
technology are being created by the Amateur Radio Relay League (ARRL),
said Power Line Communications Assn. (PLCA) Pres. Alan Shark: "There is
a lot of misinformation being spread by ARRL. This has become like an
unmitigated war that ARRL has declared on this industry."

It's one thing to conduct a small scale technical trial, but commercial
deployment involves working out business and other internal issues at
various levels of a utility, said Kilbourne. Adding to the mix are
unresolved FCC and state regulatory issues, especially for
investor-owned utilities (IOUs), he said, and these may also factor into
utility decisions on "how fast they want to move forward. There is a lot
of the same mentality in the utility industry that they want to be first
to be second" -- fast followers, not pioneers. He said he expected to
see more traction in deployments after FCC rules come out: "I definitely
believe that will eliminate some of the uncertainty."

Kilbourne said the recent shutdowns of trials weren't for technical
reasons. For instance, he said, the trial in Raleigh by Progress Energy
Corp. was stopped after the utility collected all the information it
wanted. "They went ahead and decided to rework the data and that's what
they are going through at this point and it's not that they are getting
out of BPL." One of the issues that the utility raised was regulatory
uncertainty, he said. When the FCC comes out with its rules, utilities
that have completed trials will have an easier time making up their
minds about going commercial, he added.

Most industry executives agreed there are more BPL technology providers
now than when the trials started a couple years ago. One official blamed
unsuccessful trials on some providers that sold equipment that didn't
work well, was very expensive, and had safety issues and risks of
interfering with ham radio. Another official said the trials that had
the greatest problems can all be attributed to one technology provider.
What ARRL doesn't realize, he said, is that BPL has different
technologies that operate differently. In some cases, smaller companies
find it difficult to get financial backing, he said: "So some of the
stuff they are doing may take a little bit longer and cause some market
confusion." Some products now deployed were designed for European
applications different from those in the U.S., he said.

Jay Birnbaum, pres. of Current Technologies, which is partnering with
Cinergy, an Ohio utility, to provide commercial BPL service in
Cincinnati, said his company had kept its operations low key for
competitive reasons. "We know we are going to have DSL and cable trying
to compete very heavily with us and they have the wherewithal to do
that." The end game for the nascent BPL industry, he said, wasn't merely
to show the technology works but to develop a "real business,
economically viable for the long term that can compete with cable and
DSL. We still think we are top of the first innings right now." As for
why BPL hasn't taken off more, he said some utilities had hooked up
early with systems that ended up not being technically and economically
feasible: "Without seeing the fruits of their labor they are disinclined
to go forward." Another reason, he said, was that utilities "generally
tend to move very slowly." Utilities are reluctant to adopt new
technologies -- especially when energy and telecom stocks have been hit
hard the past several years, Birnbaum said. Many also lost a lot of
money in telecom investments in the late 1990s, he said, and the recent
blackout forced them to refocus on their core electric distribution
business. Many utilities don't see BPL as a broadband product but
something that will enhance their electric distribution through
automated meter reading and outage detection, he said.

Birnbaum didn't provide details of the company's commercial deployment
in Ohio beyond saying it's "continuously expanding and we have many
thousand homes passed." He said Current was in discussion with several
small and medium utilities that are looking at deployment. But, he said,
they "tend to move very slowly and they tend to be a little
conservative." He said he expected to see more deployments in a couple
years.

PLCA's Shark said large-scale BPL rollouts would ensue when utilities
see the success of commercial deployments in Manassas, Va., and by
Cynergy in Cincinnati. Once utilities see that the technology works and
has gained customer acceptance, there will be more takers because what's
being done in those places is replicable elsewhere, he said.  But, he
said, he expects municipal utilities such as Manassas rather than IOUs
to be leaders in BPL because they have "more control over their own
destinies." Shark, who heads the IEEE's BPL advisory committee, said
having standards in place wouldn't necessarily hasten deployment: "There
is still a lot of experimentation going on. You don't want a standard at
a time when people are learning new things about how it works." The
technology deployed in Manassas and Cincinnati "works great," he said,
and future standardization won't prevent these systems from deploying
further. He said the advisory committee would likely make
recommendations to the IEEE by April next year. -- Dinesh Kumar