recent
developments
Consistent with comments in preceding pages of this note,
recent news for Access BPL enthusiasts in Australia and
overseas has not been good.
In September 2005 Tasmanian utility Aurora Energy launched
what was variously characterised as Australia's first
commercial BPL-to-the-home trial or even "The world's
first large-scale trial". (The latter claim might
surprise people who had read of overseas activity.)
The exercise - involving Mitsubishi, AAPT and Datafast
- initially involved 500 households in an upmarket part
of the city. A spokesman stated
I
believe that it's probably the first time we'll see
broadband delivered to the masses .... We'll be able
to provide a whole range of new services. Broadband
will be a real option that customers have. As the new
player we do definitely have to provide very competitive
pricing and no doubt we'll raise the bar on both pricing
and capacity.
Aurora's
partner Datafast said
This
is not a technical trial - the technology works. This
is the first stage of a commercial roll-out. ... The
commercial trial launched today will run for approximately
nine months - initially with customers in Hobart and
then extending to other parts of the state
Immediate
responses were underwhelming, with criticisms that the
offering was overpriced rather than competively priced
and was subject to unusually low traffic limits.
Tim Gaden for example commented
TasTel
claims the new BPL technology can offer Internet access
at up to 200Mbit/s, significantly faster than the speeds
reached by ADSL2 and 2+ technology. However, the actual
speeds offered during the trial are much slower. The
fastest priced BPL plan offered by TasTel is only 4Mbit/s
and includes only 2GB of data for $79.95/month. (It
offers a 12Mbit/s plan, "price on application").
The slowest plan is 256/64 and includes an astoundingly
small 20MB of data, which includes uploads. An additional
network access charge will also be levied, although
it is being waived for the trial, which could last twelve
months
Others claimed that the technology was flawed, pointing
to an audio recording
that elegantly demonstrated RF interference problems with
access BPL in Tasmania. (Links to overseas recordings
are here).
Some forecast greater interference problems as the trial
progressed, expanding from a precinct where much of the
powerline was underground.
Others - such as the author of this page - simply questioned
the business case, commenting that although the technology
can be made to work there are uncertainties about competitiveness
of a large-scale implementation on a commercial basis.
Aurora shortly thereafter announced it would be concurrently
trialling other technologies, with for example fibre-to-the-home.
In November 2007 Aurora CEO Peter Davis announced that
the Access BPL trial would cease, with Aurora concentrating
on optic fibre activities and selling its 72% stake in
telecommunications retailer Tastel.
Davis admitted the utilicom model had been disappointing,
commenting that Tastel "certainly it hasn't been
a good money-making exercise for Aurora". The announcement
appears to have reflected a recognition that commercial
rollout of Access BPL in Tasmania, if authorised by ACMA,
would not be viable.
The Aurora BPL announcement in 2005 was followed shortly
by news that major US utility PPL had abandoned its LeHigh
Valley BPL trial as uncompetitive, reportedly because
its pool of potential customers — 1.3 million Pennsylvania
electricity customers — was "too small".
Elsewhere in the US TXU announced
"an agreement to transform TXU Electric Delivery's
power distribution network into the nation's first broadband-enabled
Smart Grid". The background brief for that announcement
claims that the technology has "No Potential for
Interference" and features a quote by Federal Energy
Regulatory Commission Pat Wood:
It's
my hope that a year from now boards of directors and
shareholders and customers are all asking utilities,
'Why aren't you in BPL?'
The answer to that question might have been 'because BPL
isn't commercially viable', an answer underscored in April
2010 when Manassas - still touted as the leading US BPL
deployment, announced that it was abandoning its BPL project.
At that time Manassas had a grand total of some 520 participants,
a figure at odds with recurrent glowing predictions that
BPL was about to sweep the nation and conquer the world.
Other trials had earlier been quietly abandoned, a contrast
to the hoopla with which they had been inaugurated.
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blaw