[LeArc] Electric lines will carry Internet to Illinois town (Princeton)

[Duane Whittingham]

[uggg, this sucks, Duane]

Electric lines will carry Internet to Illinois town


By Jon Van
Tribune staff reporter
Published November 26, 2005

PRINCETON, Ill. -- Starting in December this town of 7,500 will begin 
offering high-speed Internet service over the electrical lines that power 
the city.

It is among a handful of communities nationwide to plunge into a new 
technology called broadband over power lines, or BPL, that competes with 
Internet connections provided by telephone and cable TV operators. Combined 
with wireless technologies, broadband service delivered over power 
lines--and perhaps one day even through natural gas pipelines--raises the 
likelihood that going online anywhere at any time for very low cost will 
soon be a reality.

The Princeton service, which began testing this spring, is being watched by 
small communities across Illinois. One member of the Illinois Commerce 
Commission hopes other towns will experiment with BPL to spread Internet 
connectivity and drive down costs.

About 15 customers are served by Princeton's BPL test deployment, which 
demonstrates the service is robust and works well, said Jason Bird, 
superintendent of Princeton's municipal electric utility.

"From the utility's standpoint, this hasn't been difficult," he said. "The 
equipment is similar to what we work with every day."

Customers seem to like the service, especially the in-house portability BPL 
offers. A computer can move from one room to another and go online simply 
by plugging its modem into any electrical outlet in the house.

"I'm much more active on the Interent now because the speed is much better 
than with dial-up," said Leslie Lund, who began using BPL in March. "I 
don't get interference, even when my husband uses his power tools."

The electric line connections get their Internet signals from a 12-mile 
loop of fiber that Princeton installed last year as a means of attracting 
industrial development. After one factory left town in 2003 and the manager 
of another complained about the town's lack of advanced communications 
infrastructure, the city decided it needed fiber, said Mayor Keith Cain.

"We already had our own electric utility, so that gave us a real 
advantage," he said. Since the city installed fiber and started testing BPL 
the local cable and phone operators upgraded their systems and cut service 
rates, he said.

One downside to Princeton's BPL experience has been an inability to get 
enough equipment to begin the commercial rollout sooner, Cain said. The 
town's BPL vendor ran into financial difficulty and stopped producing 
equipment while it went into reorganization.

Under new ownership, the vendor now says it can ship the products needed 
for the rollout, said Steve Brust, vice president of Connecting Point 
Community Centers, the Internet service provider that manages Princeton's 
broadband service.

"The equipment works fine, but it's proprietary," Brust said. "There are a 
lot of companies in BPL right now, but there are no standards and no one 
company dominates the market."

Lack of standards is common with any new technology, said Raymond Blair, 
vice president for BPL initiatives for IBM Corp. Broadband technologies 
like Wi-Fi that are based on standards enjoy popularity because the 
equipment is interoperable and less expensive than proprietary systems.

At least three industry-based committees are working toward BPL 
standardization, Blair said. The emerging industry should benefit from 
their work within a year or two, he said.

"The best case for BPL right now lies in creating a smart electrical grid," 
Blair said. Utilities can spot trouble, read meters, improve efficiencies 
and generally boost reliability once they install fiber to monitor their 
grids, he said.

Once BPL standards are in place, equipment costs will drop, making a 
stronger economic case for offering high-speed Internet to residences, 
Blair said.

Robert Lieberman, a member of the Illinois Commerce Commission, said the 
state has $5 million it will award to projects intended to extend Internet 
connectivity.

There will be another $5 million available next year, and he hopes that 
some BPL projects will receive a portion of that Digital Divide 
infrastructure funding.

Also, Lieberman said, the ICC and state lawmakers need to provide 
incentives to electric utilities to install smart grid equipment that makes 
BPL to residential customers possible. Texas lawmakers recently adopted 
such incentives, and legislators in New York are considering doing so, he said.

Power lines aren't the Internet's only new avenue into homes. There's also 
interest in using natural gas pipelines.

Broadband in gas, or BiG, has been proven to work in concept, although 
field trials haven't yet been launched, said George West, a senior analyst 
with West Technology Research Solutions, a market research firm based in 
Mountain View, Calif.

BiG would rely upon ultra-wideband radio waves traveling through gas pipes 
to bring Internet to customers. The Federal Communications Commission 
approved ultra-wideband applications a few years ago but requires they 
operate at very low power to avoid interference with wireless phones and 
other appliances.

Pumping ultra-wideband signals along gas lines buried underground would 
shield them from interference, enabling them to operate at higher power, 
West said. "BiG has the potential to serve 18 million homes by 2010."

The ICC's Lieberman said he is intrigued by BiG.

"I'd love to see a project with People's Gas or Nicor to test this," he 
said. "My theory is the more pipes you have to bring the Internet to 
customers, the better for everyone."

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jvan at tribune.com


Copyright © 2005, Chicago Tribune


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