Apr 13, 2006
Broadband over power line (BPL) technology has long been considered a potentially beneficial technology, but it's use has been limited to a few prototype projects in the United States and Europe. The Federal Communications Commission in the US has also backed the technology, but it's largely been considered a broadband delivery mechanism for rural areas that aren't served by cable or DSL technologies.
This might be about to change.
California's Public Utility Commission is expected to approve a proposal that would allow state power utilities to form separate companies to develop and sell BPL to consumers. The proposal also authorizes a utility to grant the new entities free access to their networks. San Diego’s utility, Sempra, says it would consider establishing a BPL service and have its gas and electric utility grant that business free access to its network forever. Basically, BPL would run free over the power lines (although consumers would pay a fee.)
This move is significant for a number of reasons. First, it could prove the commercial and technical viability of BPL once and for all. California has a robust, competitive broadband market with cable companies and telcos providing relatively inexpensive and reliable (by American standards, that is) broadband service. Some cities such as San Francisco are even planning to provide free Wi-Fi service throughout the city in a partnership with EarthLink. Now there could be another alternative, and one that could likely be bundled with utility service, placing yet another crimp in the escalating triple-play debate. Now the MSOs and telcos have something beside other each other to worry about.
It's also interesting to see how this BPL initiative is playing out politically. The other state utilities are strongly opposed to free access forever because they don't want to be in the broadband business. They'd rather negotiate with outside service providers to offer the BPL service, charge more for the access and split any profits with utility ratepayers. They label this the landlord model. Various consumer groups in the state are also against the free model. They argue that utility customers would be subsidizing BPL while utility shareholders would reap the profits.
Some environmentalists, meanwhile, argue that BPL interferes with radio transmissions, including ham radios that have been useful during past natural disasters such as earthquakes. Some warn the technology creates more problems than it solves.
Still, California's action is significant because it could jump-start a largely dormant technology and push the heavily capitalized utility industry into the broadband business (directly or in partnership with service providers.) Of course, the real question here is whether the public really desires BPL. Can it emerge as a viable commercial alternative to DSL, satellite, wireless and cable technologies? The residents of California may have the answers.
(Al Senia is the editor of America's Network.)
The new 200 Mbps BROADBAND over POWER LINES Technology
Thursday, April 13, 2006
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The Myth of Web 2.0
ReplyDeleteIt’s not that it’s not real, it’s just that Web 1.0 is more real
BY GARY BEACH
All the talk these days is about Web 2.0 and the ways business will be able to leverage it to foster commerce in 2006 and beyond. But I recently had a Web 1.0 experience that was all too typical.
I was visiting my in-laws. I needed to log on to the Web and sat down at their PC to do so. I finally got on but...it was an agonizingly slow process. My in-laws connect to the Web through a dial-up modem.
Of course, most CIO readers have high-speed connections to the Internet at work and probably at home too. But the experience I had at my in-laws is the norm for your customers. In fact, according to published reports, about 70 million of the 120 million households in America with an Internet connection log on via telephone dial-up.
That’s 70 million households—and hundreds of millions of customers—for whom going online is both tedious and time-consuming. Consequently, it’s not all that easy to sell them anything through the Web no matter how user-friendly your site may be. But that could change very quickly.
Get out your pens and write down these three letters: BPL. It’s a term coined by the Federal Communications Commission and it stands for broadband over power lines. Type BPL into your favorite search engine and learn all you can.
Until BPL came along, households had two major options for high-speed connectivity: DSL lines from telephone companies and cable lines from cable operators. Now BPL brings a third option that is both exciting and incredibly simple.
BPL technology has the potential to bring high-speed Internet connectivity to any home that has a power line connected to it and is equipped with a BPL modem. It plugs into any electrical outlet. The entire town of Manassas, Va., is connected via BPL, and parts of New York City and Cincinnati are also experimenting with it.
BPL is an electrifyingly simple approach to getting more American households wired for the coming broadband world of Web 2.0. I would recommend you call your local utility to ask about it.
Gary Beach, Publisher
gbeach@cio.com
http://www.cio.com/archive/040106/publisher.html