The PLCA doesn't give the ARRL much credit for focusing on the BPL-generated
RFI issues and staying quiet about BPL's poor economics. "This has become
like an unmitigated war that ARRL has declared on this industry" doesn't
sound very collegial...
73,
Dave, AA6YQ
-----Original Message-----
From: rfi-bounces@contesting.com [mailto:rfi-bounces@contesting.com] On
Behalf Of ERIC ROSENBERG
Sent: Tuesday, August 31, 2004 9:47 AM
To: rfi@contesting.com
Subject: [RFI] From Communications Daily re: BPL
Business and Regulatory Issues Slow Commercial BPL
>From Communications Daily
Friday, August 20, 2004
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
Source: Communications Daily - August 20, 2004
_______________________________________________
RFI mailing list
RFI@contesting.com http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/rfi
_______________________________________________
RFI mailing list
RFI@contesting.com
http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/rfi
|