ENTERGY ANNOUNCES BPL DEPLOYMENT WITH POWERGRID IN LOUISIANA

Entergy Corporation, one of the nation's largest electric utilities serving over 2.7 million retail customers in Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas and Mississippi, announced that it launched a one-year BPL pilot with PowerGrid Communications Inc. in Baton Rouge, LA. The new pilot demonstrates both Smart Grid applications to enhance the reliability and efficiency of Entergy's power distribution grid and the ability to deliver broadband services to businesses and homes.

PowerGrid will work with Entergy to identify ways to use BPL technology to improve its core utility services, reduce operating costs and increase the overall reliability of the electric grid. PowerGrid is demonstrating automatic meter reading, grid outage reporting, Internet Access/ISP, Voice over IP (VOIP) telephone service, Video on Demand and video surveillance. New applications for the broadband network will be introduced as the trial moves to the second phase in Little Rock, AR.

"Our objectives in this pilot are to test the technology and its capabilities, validate the economics of deploying BPL, especially in rural areas, and test the ability to use this technology to locate power outages, read electric meters, provide security monitoring, and do remote switching of distribution equipment," Ed Melendreras, Entergy's vice president of sales and marketing said. "PowerGrid was selected after a thorough review process of the different BPL technologies available in the marketplace today. We felt PowerGrid's solution has potential, and are looking forward to appraising the results of this pilot program."

The pilot being developed by PowerGrid will establish the technology and the range of services to be delivered as well as the economics of deploying a BPL network. The initial services will include the use of PowerGrid's GridEye system to locate power outages, read electric meters and do remote switching of distribution equipment. Jeff Schumacher, PowerGrid's Chief Operations Officer added, "Though this pilot, we want to demonstrate the technology and its capabilities and to extend the reach of BPL networks to rural areas economically. Based on our wide experience, PowerGrid has selected Corinex advanced, industry-proven and market leading equipment to for the BPL pilot. Using Corinex's 2nd generation equipment, we are able to build not only a reliable, fast and economic network but one which is designed to comply with FCC rules and which prevents any potential harmful ham radio interference. This is an area in which we have a great deal of experience and one to which we are fully committed." The announcement of the deployment in Baton Rouge, LA follows the announcement last month of another deployment by Entergy in Little Rock, AR.

Also Entergy Corp.(NYSE: ETR) Enters BPL World with Ambient Corp. to Pilot Smart Grid and Triple-Play services !!!