Subject: [NEXTEL-1] FCC's Powell Praises Internet Service Provided over Power Lines

From: Marcel <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 10 Apr 2003 16:56:14 -0400

FCC's Powell Praises Internet Service Provided over Power Lines

Calling it within striking distance of being the third major broadband pipe into
the
home, FCC Chairman Michael Powell praised a demonstration of high-speed
Internet service delivered over the 40-year-old electrical wiring in a suburban
Washington, D.C. home. The demonstration, sponsored by Current Technologies
of Germantown, Md. and PEPCO Holdings, showed electrical outlets being used
to deliver e-mail, Web pages, games movies and phone service. Current
Technologies said it could provide Internet service at four times the speed of a

dial-up connection for about $30 per month. Faster connections would cost
more. Customers would have to buy a $70 modem about the size of a deck of
cards. While some see Internet access over power lines as a competitor to
cable, digital subscriber lines and wireless, others are skeptical. The skeptics

say that regulatory and technical issues must be resolved before Internet access

over power lines becomes widely available. They say resolving the issues could
take five years. The FCC will try to encourage the technology, Chairman Powell
said.

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April 9, 2003

Power Lines Can Deliver Internet Access

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Filed at 7:24 p.m. ET

POTOMAC, Md. (AP) -- The walls in a one-story brick home in suburban Washington
don't talk but its power outlets do.

From those outlets pour streams of digital video, interactive games, online
radio stations and services familiar to people who use
cable or telephone modems to get high-speed Internet connections. This
technology that delivers broadband through ordinary
electric wiring should be commercially available to some consumers this year.

``This is within striking distance of being the third major broadband pipe into
the home,'' said Federal Communications
Commission Chairman Michael Powell, who visited the house Wednesday to get a
preview of the technology.

The home is part of a trial project run by Current Technologies, a company based
in Germantown, Md. The company, working
with the Potomac Electric Power Co., is providing broadband over power lines to
about 70 homes in Maryland. Another trial
offers the service in suburban Cincinnati.

Utility companies including PPL Corp. in Allentown, Pa., and Ameren Corp. in St.
Louis also are conducting test programs with
consumers.

Broadband can be up to hundreds of times faster than dial-up service and can
deliver a wider range of services, including
high-quality video.

Powell said the FCC is excited about the power line technology and is studying
whether it needs regulation. No current rules
prohibit the technology, but the FCC is concerned that Internet transmissions
carried over power lines could emit signals inside
and outside the home that cause interference.

Companies have struggled for years to make the technology work. Only recently
have they overcome technical hurdles such as
interference on the power lines and getting around electrical transformers that
block broadband signals.

``Power lines are a very difficult medium to send communications signals on,''
said Bill Blair, a utilities project manager with the
Electric Power Research Institute. He said the technology is still unproven as a
broadband competitor.

``It is potentially a huge business -- if it works,'' he said.

Jay Birnbaum, president of Current Technologies, said his company will offer the
power line broadband this year, but he didn't
know where the service would be available.

He said the cost will begin around $30 for an always-on connection more than
four times faster than a dial-up modem, he said.
Faster services that can match cable modems would cost more.

Cable modems and telephone digital subscriber lines, or DSL, typically cost
about $50 a month.

Powell has said he wants more broadband competition to lower consumer prices and
bring high-speed communications services
to more people.

In the Maryland test program, the company uses a fiber-optic line to inject an
Internet signal into a power line after it has left a
power station. The signal then moves to neighborhoods, using equipment on power
poles to leapfrog transformers and flow into
homes.

``Every outlet in the house becomes a broadband outlet,'' Birnbaum said.

The only extra equipment a consumer needs is a modem that plugs into an electric
outlet and connects to a computer or Internet
gadget. About the size of a deck of cards and costing less than $70, the power
line modems are already in stores for use in home
computer networks that use electric wiring.

The wiring in the test home is more than 40 years old and required no changes
besides the modems, Birnbaum said.

Powell watched as a Current Technologies employee simultaneously used a special
stereo to listen to an Internet radio station,
showed a high-quality video of a movie streamed from the Web and played a
motorcycle video game in live competition with
others online. All the services flowed through a single power outlet.

``I love this stuff,'' said Powell, who described himself as a ``techno-ecstatic
geek.''

Asked if he would put the power line service in his home, Powell said: ``Yes, I
would. I'm a little bummed it's not in my area
yet.''

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/technology/AP-High-Speed-House.html?pagewanted=print&position=top

^------

On the Net:

Federal Communications Commission: http://www.fcc.gov

Current Technologies: http://www.currenttechnologies.com

Power Line Communications Association: http://www.plca.net

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April 10, 2003

Internet via the Power Grid: New Interest in Obvious Idea

By JOHN MARKOFF and MATT RICHTEL

     AN FRANCISCO, April 9 — As cable, telephone and wireless companies compete
to provide high-speed Internet
     access to homes, a new challenger is emerging based on a decidedly old
technology.

The idea is to send Internet data over ordinary electric power lines. Proponents
argue that it can be a competitive alternative to
digital cable, telephone digital subscriber line and wireless efforts to connect
the "last mile" between homes and Internet service
providers.

Power-line networking has held out promise for several decades, in part because
the electric grid is already in place, running to
almost every residence in the nation, and also because it was thought that power
companies would leap at the idea of a new
revenue source — if the technology is proven.

But the idea has elicited deep skepticism from technologists who argue that the
electric power network is a remarkably difficult
environment for transmitting digital information. Moreover the nation's electric
power industry has for the most part remained
complacent about the technology.

Still, the technology is getting sudden attention in response to several trial
efforts around the country and in other nations. Today,
Michael K. Powell, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, gave
the concept a further boost when he toured
a demonstration site for the technology in Potomac, Md.

The agency and its chairman have said they are backing the power-line approach
in an effort to stir competition and offer greater
consumer choice.

"I was struck by how it has matured," Mr. Powell said. He said the F.C.C. was
preparing to undertake a regulatory proceeding
that could help pave the way for commercial deployment. "I'm optimistic," he
said.

The F.C.C. has licensed seven companies to conduct field tests in roughly a
dozen communities around the country, including
Raleigh, N.C.; Potomac, Md.; Cincinnati,; Lehigh, Pa.; and Briarcliff, N.Y.

But even if the technology can be made to work, weighty business questions
remain. What is unclear, according to analysts and
academics who follow the emerging industry, is whether any of the fledgling
competitors can make money offering consumers
lower-cost access to high-speed data, including Internet-based telephone calls
and video.

The technology requires the installation of equipment that acts as a switch to
transfer data between the power lines and fiber
optic lines, which traditionally carry Internet traffic.

Currently there are several competing approaches. Some companies are developing
the technology to transmit data over
traditional fiber cables until it reaches telephone poles that serve small
clusters of homes, where it would then be transferred to
the power lines. Others are taking a more radical approach, trying to transmit
Internet data directly from electrical power
substations that serve several hundred homes and businesses in a neighborhood.

For the more ambitious plans, "there are all sorts of costs associated with
installation," said Rahul Tongia, a researcher at
Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. "The costs do involve people going up
the poles. That's not to say these costs are
crippling, but they have to be factored in."

At least one company is trying to minimize the costs associated with home
installation by relying on inexpensive consumer
equipment that is already available to use electrical wiring as a local area
network within the home.

"What we are now seeing in our customer's homes," said Jay Birnbaum, president
of Current Technologies, "are data rates
ranging from two to four megabits," which is much faster than old-fashioned
dial- up services but not particularly fast for
high-speed broadband services. Current Technologies, based in Germantown, Md.,
is conducting the Potomac trial that Mr.
Powell visited today, in cooperation with the local power provider, the Potomac
Electric Power Company.

Despite the obstacles, some power companies may forge ahead because of further
advantages from providing the service,
including the ability to regulate the flow of electricity more directly and to
use the network to check power meters over the
Internet rather than visiting individual homes.

PowerWan, a start-up in Palo Alto, Calif., has begun testing a technology
capable of doing just that in a handful of homes in
Hawaii. Moreover, the company says it can offer data rates at twice the speed of
telephone line D.S.L., said John Wheadon,
PowerWan's acting chief executive.

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/10/technology/10POWE.html?pagewanted=print&position=top