European BPL Specs Expected to Influence U.S. Utilities
A standards body backed by the EU approved the first access BPL specifications, which promise to hasten rollout of “high-speed, low-cost broadband access, voice and audio visual services as well as utility applications for control and management operations.” The Open PLC European Research Alliance (OPERA) said it picked technology by Spanish chipmaker Design of System on Silicon (DS2) as the baseline for the specification for access and in-home BPL. “It is a step in the right direction,” said Brett Kilbourne, regulatory dir. of the United Power Line Council (UPLC): “It is better than nothing at all.”
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Consortia working on BPL standards include OPERA, the United Powerline Assn. (UPA), the HomePlug Alliance and the Consumer Electronics Powerline Communication Alliance (CEPCA). OPERA’s specifications have backing from UPA, which includes companies using the DS2 chips, DS2 said. HomePlug largely has been working the in-building side of BPL.
OPERA’s effort, though focused on Europe, will have an indirect effect on U.S. utilities, said Kilbourne. OPERA has put out a specification for access and in-home BPL application coexistence, he said. Reading between the lines, it’s DS2 and HomePlug, Kilbourne said: “It is going to promote the use of HomePlug devices over there [in Europe] and vice versa.” The OPERA announcement’s timing isn’t all coincidence, Kilbourne said. An IEEE working group on access BPL standards is to take its first vote at a March conference in Orlando. OPERA’s specification is likely to be used at IEEE as well, he said.
OPERA was expected to adopt the DS2 standard because the technology is widely used in Europe, said analyst Naqi Jaffery of Telecom Trends International. Thanks to its adoption by many firms, DS2 amounts to a de facto access BPL standard in Europe, he added. It also sees use by a few U.S. firms, Jaffery said. OPERA’s move could sway some utilities to weigh BPL options, he said, since the absence of a standard amid competing technologies has been a “stumbling block.” With HomePlug the de facto in-home BPL standard, he said, it would have made more sense for OPERA to dub it the in-building specification, Jaffery said.
The OPERA specifications may affect European rollouts, but “I don’t think they will have a major impact on the deployment or adoption rates in the U.S.,” said Rick Nicholson, vp of Energy Insights. Utilities continue to struggle to find a “formula that works” for BPL, he said. Despite favorable regulations and a supportive investment community, he said, major BPL player Idacomm quit the market; in recent months another large utility, CenterPoint Energy, scaled back BPL deployment plans. And only one new utility has decided to make a “significant commitment” to BPL, Nicholson said: “This underscores our position that utilities will find it difficult to make money from implementing BPL technology.” A few BPL providers, like Current Communications, may find niches in the broadband market, but CenterPoint and most other utilities will restrict BPL use to internal applications, he predicted.