UPLC PowerLine - June 17, 2008

In its Fifth Report on broadband deployment in the U.S. released last week, the FCC stated that the BPL industry continues to evolve and that "new BPL companies and technologies are entering the marketplace and new strategies are emerging." Specifically, it reported that "utility companies have formed on using BPL to improve their own services, including a variety of utility and energy "Smart Grid" applications, such as advanced metering for time-of-use pricing, load management and power outage warning detection."

The FCC also released a Report and Order and Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, which proposed to track broadband availability using Census Tracts, instead of zip codes under its current rules. This will provide a more accurate description of the availability of broadband, the Commission stated. The FCC will also require carriers to report data by categories of subscriptions based on the speeds of services that are offered. There are eight categories: "first-generation" data at 200 kbps to 768 kbps; "basic broadband tier 1" at 768 kbps to 1.5 megabits per second; "broadband tier 2" at 1.5 Mbps to 3 Mbps; "broadband tier 3" at 3 Mbps to 6 Mbps; "broadband tier 4" at 6 Mbps to 10 Mbps; "broadband tier 5" at 10 Mbps to 25 Mbps; "broadband tier 6" at 25 Mbps to 100 Mbps; and "broadband tier 7" for any service providing speeds greater than 100 Mbps. Ultimately, the FCC intends to take the data and develop a nationwide broadband mapping program. The FCC will collect data from a wider variety of providers, including broadband wireless and interconnected VoIP providers.

In general, comments on the rulemaking in WC Docket No. 07-38 will be due 30 days after it is published in the Federal Register, and reply comments will be due 60 days after it is published in the Federal Register. The only exception is for comments/replies on the broadband mapping proposals, which must be filed respectively within 15 and 30 days of the Federal Register Notice publication.

The Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (ICASA) issued a Notice this month to hold public hearings for regulations in respect to technical standards for power line telecommunications. The hearing will be held on June 18-19 in Johannesburg, and will feature testimony from the electric industry, as well as the telecom industry and certain radio users (including Amateur operators) in the high-frequency (HF) bands. The regulations were proposed in February, and include standards for both conducted and radiated emissions that BPL must follow. The proposed rules are reportedly modeled after the FCC rules, and, like the FCC rules, include interference mitigation requirements such as 20 dB notching and certain exclusion zones and bands of exclusion designed to protect certain government operations. However, the regulations include limits on conducted emissions, which are not part of the FCC rules. For more information, please contact the UPLC Legal/Regulatory Department.

This month, Cullman Electric Cooperative and IBEC are reportedly planning to offer BPL Internet service to approximately 1800 customers served by its Berlin substation. Reportedly, residents will be required to pay $99 fee to purchase and activate a BPL modem; and monthly service starts at $29.95. Co-op customers who use the service will be allowed to pay the fee through their monthly power bill.

Brian Lacy, Communications Coordinator for Cullman stated, "we're going to put it out there. The people who live out there are right now really limited in what their choices are. That's one of the reasons the co-op is looking at this in the first place." Lacy said if the program is successful, the co-op plans to expand the service to other rural parts of the county that previously had few options for obtaining broadband access. "If it's something that turns out to be a good thing, and it's feasible and something we feel will be to our members' benefit, then we would move forward and start working on bringing it to other portions of our service territory," he said.

Scott Lee, President & CEO of IBEC stated, "if everything goes well with this deployment, we will be scheduling additional substations by August and if we get rolling in a year, year and a half, we could have all Cullman Electric (Cooperative) deployed, which covers about 40,000 homes.

Melissa Cartee, the co-op's Vice President of Member Services and Community Development, added that "it's not just a pilot program to see if it's going to work or not, but it's a pilot program to determine how fast we're going to continue on with it. We think this is something that our membership has anxiously awaited for and we are anxiously awaiting for them to have it available," Cartee said.

Last month, DS2 announced the availability of a new compact reference design, the DE21P module for embedded powerline communications applications for home networking and IPTV applications. Reportedly, "the DE21P enables product differentiation and can be used for widely different products including set top boxes, home gateways, remote speaker systems, IP cameras, or personal computers;" and it is designed for use with DS2's 200 mbps Aitana chipset. According to DS2, the reference design facilitates connectivity through the following features:

• MII for high speed applications like Ethernet to powerline adapter
• UART interface allows for integration of service data
• TDM / I2S for optimum use in native audio applications
• Flexible power supply for the easiest integration with single, dual or triple supply GPIO for advanced features like One button security set-up that removes the need for PC configuration, and multi-color powerline link status indicator

According to DS2, the DE21P Embedded Powerline Modem facilitates a fully plug and play networking experience. The embedded web page in each Aitana chipset provides a simplified configuration of home networking devices, while the new processing capabilities include on-chip support for native TR-069 client software in the powerline modem to provide a standard solution for service providers to manage their customers' home networks. The DE21P has managed queues with multiple priority levels and strict bandwidth and latency guarantees. It supports the full mix of different types of service like Data, VoIP, IPTV or Video on Demand on the same network, and each DE21P node ensures that each traffic stream is allocated its required network resources.

The Universal Powerline Association (UPA) announced that it will hold a two-day official "plug-test" and certification program event on June 25-26 in Valencia, Spain, during its UPA Powerline Interop 2008.

"The BPL Access and In-Building BPL markets are experiencing unprecedented growth, and as such, the industry requires comprehensive compliance and interoperability programs to ensure interoperability between Powerline products from different vendors and compatibility with existing Powerline products," said Brian Donnelly, Chairman, UPA. "With over 4.5 million UPA chipsets sold and in use globally and given the UPA's undisputed technology leadership in the BPL Access and In-Building markets, the UPA has again taken the lead in offering the first Powerline certification program for these markets.

Utilities, operators, system integrators and others now have a guarantee for the success of their large scale deployments due to the UPA's rigorous testing process to verify performance, coverage, coexistence, and interoperability of UPA products.

The UPA is inviting product developers to register their UPA based product for participation in the compliance and interoperability Plugtest by 18th June with the UPA Secretariat's office. The certification event hosted by the UPA will take place at the test laboratories of the Polytechnic University, Valencia, Spain and the certification process will be overseen by experts from the Polytechnic Innovation Centre (CPI) and the international test house, ITACA. The UPA will publish a list of its certified products on the UPA website to assist utilities, operators, system integrators and others in their vendor selection. For more information, contact the UPLC or UPA.

CenterPoint Energy and Oncor Electric Delivery have filed proposals with the Texas Public Utility Commission seeking cost recovery for their advanced metering projects. CenterPoint plans to deploy 250,000 Itron Open Way interactive meters over a three year period and is proposing to recover its costs through two separate surcharges that would be incurred by retail electric providers (REP). The first charge would be a monthly infrastructure charge for eight years based on usage, estimated to be about $1.75 per month for each REP customer, based on usage of 1,000 Kwh. The second charge of about $4.75 per month would be billed to REPs for each interactive meter the company installs for that REP's customers. That charge would continue for five years after the meter is installed. Oncor asked the PUC for a surcharge of $2.35/month for 11 years on residential bills to pay for the meters, communications and support systems, low-income assistance and an education campaign. Oncor's plan involves the deployment of 3 million meters from Landis+Gyr over four-years. Both CenterPoint and Oncor are waiting until the PUC approves their plans before moving forward with deployment. A PUC decision could take months. In the meantime, the utilities are working to educate the public on the benefits of AMI, which will allow customers to control their electric bills as well as help utilities provide more reliable electric and gas service.