Subject: [NEXTEL-1] VoIP over Power Line Set for Testing

From: NEXTEL-1
Date: Wed, 23 Jun 2004 01:45:30 -0400

VoIP over Power Line Set for Testing

By John Edwards

June 14, 2004

What better way to provide Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) service
to
millions of residences and businesses than to feed the technology
directly
to electrical outlets? Such an approach would make VoIP as easy, perhaps
even easier, to access than standard telephone service. At least that's
how
Atlanta-based LecStar Telecom sees things.

LecStar (See http://www.lecstar.com/corporate/) is preparing to test
high-speed Internet access over power lines during a six-month field
trial
with an undisclosed regional electric utility. LecStar says it initially
plans to offer 30 utility customers Broadband over Power Line (BPL)
service, and approximately one in five customers also will receive phone
service over BPL as part of a VoIP trial. LecStar will be one of the
first
local exchange carriers to offer VoIP over BPL service to customers in
the
U.S.

"The offering of BPL technology will advance our corporate strategy of
partnering with electric utilities to jointly market voice and data
services using traditional methods of service delivery," says W. Dale
Smith, LecStar's president and CEO. "Going forward, LecStar's experience
developing channel marketing through local and regional utility
companies
will be extremely valuable in capitalizing on the BPL technology as a
cost-efficient, reliable alternative for the delivery of high-speed data
and voice services."

LecStar expects to bring its VoIP technology to customers in areas where
electric utilities have made BPL upgrades to power lines. The BPL
service
is designed to be "synchronous," meaning that it is approximately
equally
fast at uploading and downloading information. Synchronous speed is
typically not the case with DSL and cable, where the download speed is
usually faster than the speed of uploading data. "BPL's speed,
convenience
and flexibility is truly unique," says Michael Britt, LecStar's vice
president of channel development.

After the field study is completed, near the end of this year, a LecStar
statement says the company will "solidify the business and revenue model
to
allow for a broad distribution of these services." LecStar is a
telecommunications provider competing with BellSouth and other service
providers in the southeastern U.S. LecStar was recently acquired by
Fonix
Corp., a Salt Lake City-based company that specializes in delivering
speech
technology to consumer systems and devices.

BPL is a controversial Internet access technology that has yet to
receive
final FCC approval. Several radio spectrum user organizations, including
public service groups and amateur radio operators, have warned that the
technology poses a serious interference threat that cannot be easily
resolved through filtering.

Copyright © 2004 PricewaterhouseCoopers

The preceding article was written by John Edwards, a freelance
technology
writer based in Gilbert, Arizona.
He can be reached by phone at +1-480-854-0011.

 http://www.telecomdirectnews.com/do.php/105/8034?8071

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