The power of the Internet

Admit it, you've never heard of Princeton, IL. The college went to the one in New Jersey, the big Toyota plant went to the one in IN. But our Princeton, halfway between Chicago and the Quad Cities on I-80, has its high speed Internet delivered over power lines.

The Princeton service, which began testing this spring, is being watched by small communities across Illinois. One member of the Illinois Commerce Commission hopes other towns will experiment with BPL to spread Internet connectivity and drive down costs.

About 15 customers are served by Princeton's BPL test deployment, which demonstrates the service is robust and works well, said Jason Bird, superintendent of Princeton's municipal electric utility.

"From the utility's standpoint, this hasn't been difficult," he said. "The equipment is similar to what we work with every day."

Customers seem to like the service, especially the in-house portability BPL offers. A computer can move from one room to another and go online simply by plugging its modem into any electrical outlet in the house.

"I'm much more active on the Interent now because the speed is much better than with dial-up," said Leslie Lund, who began using BPL in March. "I don't get interference, even when my husband uses his power tools."

The electric line connections get their Internet signals from a 12-mile loop of fiber that Princeton installed last year as a means of attracting industrial development. After one factory left town in 2003 and the manager of another complained about the town's lack of advanced communications infrastructure, the city decided it needed fiber, said Mayor Keith Cain.

"We already had our own electric utility, so that gave us a real advantage," he said.

In addition to the above, it keeps competitors honest:

Since the city installed fiber and started testing BPL the local cable and phone operators upgraded their systems and cut service rates, he said.

Woe to the early adopters:

One downside to Princeton's BPL experience has been an inability to get enough equipment to begin the commercial rollout sooner, Cain said. The town's BPL vendor ran into financial difficulty and stopped producing equipment while it went into reorganization.

Under new ownership, the vendor now says it can ship the products needed for the rollout, said Steve Brust, vice president of Connecting Point Community Centers, the Internet service provider that manages Princeton's broadband service.

"The equipment works fine, but it's proprietary," Brust said. "There are a lot of companies in BPL right now, but there are no standards and no one company dominates the market."

Lack of standards is common with any new technology, said Raymond Blair, vice president for BPL initiatives for IBM Corp. Broadband technologies like Wi-Fi that are based on standards enjoy popularity because the equipment is interoperable and less expensive than proprietary systems.

At least three industry-based committees are working toward BPL standardization, Blair said. The emerging industry should benefit from their work within a year or two, he said.

"The best case for BPL right now lies in creating a smart electrical grid," Blair said. Utilities can spot trouble, read meters, improve efficiencies and generally boost reliability once they install fiber to monitor their grids, he said.

Once BPL standards are in place, equipment costs will drop, making a stronger economic case for offering high-speed Internet to residences, Blair said.

If this be pork, it's my favorite kind:

There will be another $5 million available next year, and he hopes that some BPL projects will receive a portion of that Digital Divide infrastructure funding.

Also, Lieberman said, the ICC and state lawmakers need to provide incentives to electric utilities to install smart grid equipment that makes BPL to residential customers possible. Texas lawmakers recently adopted such incentives, and legislators in New York are considering doing so, he said.

And if that doesn't work:

Power lines aren't the Internet's only new avenue into homes. There's also interest in using natural gas pipelines.

Broadband in gas, or BiG, has been proven to work in concept, although field trials haven't yet been launched, said George West, a senior analyst with West Technology Research Solutions, a market research firm based in Mountain View, Calif.

BiG would rely upon ultra-wideband radio waves traveling through gas pipes to bring Internet to customers. The Federal Communications Commission approved ultra-wideband applications a few years ago but requires they operate at very low power to avoid interference with wireless phones and other appliances.

Pumping ultra-wideband signals along gas lines buried underground would shield them from interference, enabling them to operate at higher power, West said. "BiG has the potential to serve 18 million homes by 2010."

I just got my latest bill for broadband. This can't happen soon enough.