Empowering the World's Broadband

Alabama ISP delivers 3 mbps at rural co-op via BPL

IBEC delivered Kaicom gear, system design Coupling via Cooper arrester gets big kudos

An ISP owned mostly by a subsidiary of the Covington (Ala) Electric Cooperative in Andalusia, Ala is delivering 3 mbps down a five-mile stretch of MV line via Kaicom BPL supplied by IBEC. AlaWeb Pioneer Services installed a technology trial to show the Andalusia, Ala-based utility that BPL works and without interference woes. The trial includes VOIP service and about 3 mbps internet.

At a time when the BPL industry is trumpeting the end of the need for such tests, AlaWeb found Covington with questions about adopting BPL, Paul Spears Sr told us last week. He runs AlaWeb -- his title is vice president -- with his son Paul Jr, manager of IT.

BPL experiences some "inherent negativity because of the word on the street" including interference worries, Spears Sr reminded. Those concerns "flew by the wayside" when service was deployed at Covington without a single ham operator complaint -- and when the utility saw 3 mbps service coming out of their power lines, noted Spears Jr.

"All the bad things they've heard about BPL have not come true in our pilot," Spears Sr added. AlaWeb -- also in Andalusia -- started as a dial-up ISP about 11 years ago and the father and son team helped bring the internet to lots of people in Southern Alabama for the first time. Spears Sr is proud of the benefits his firm was able to help deliver.

NRTC's watching

The senior AlaWeb founder recently spoke to a nurse, for example, that said he learned how to be a nurse through a WildBlue connection in his home in rural Alabama. That's a satellite-based internet service that can reach virtually every corner of the US. AlaWeb likely installed the man's WildBlue connection.

Satellite internet has inherent latency problems but is the only dial-up alternative for many in rural North America. Thus WildBlue got a big thumbs-up from National Rural Telecommunications Cooperative (NRTC) -- a firm that reports doubts about BPL's potential to serve rural consumers. NRTC combines the buying-power of its 1,300 co-op members to get good deals on services and products. The firm has expressed ongoing hope in BPL for rural service -- but tests including recent ones at the Cooperative Research Network it created with NRECA, the National Rural Electric Co-op Assn, have had only moderate results. But NRTC's no doubt watching Covington's trial. The utility's General Manager Ed Short is also chairman of NRTC

ISP's need BPL

AlaWeb has been scrambling to find broadband options to offer it customers as the value of dial-up fades. At the height of dial-up the firm had 10,000-11,000 internet customers but that's slipped as cable modem and DSL services have spread, said Spears Sr. The firm's trying to offer "a service that's going to bring you not only high-speed broadband but with other services such as voice over IP or video on demand or whatever it is that we can run down that pipe."

He knows of people subscribing to cable TV "that really don't want it because they have DirectTV or something" but subscribe for the internet access. Others he serves don't have access to cable and BPL may be their only chance to get high-speed internet. AlaWeb offers wireless broadband using Alvarion gear (www.alvarion.com) -- and has several hundred accounts. But wireless is terrain-specific and can't get to everyone, Spears Sr reminded. "We're trying to build a permanent network with electrical wires."

Call IBEC, they said

The firm visited IBEC's BPL deployment in Cullman, Ala, after another vendor recommended the Huntsville, Ala, BPL technology firm. Covington gave its "blessings and assistance" and access to a five-mile stretch of MV line. AlaWeb had picked out an MV line along "one of those long country mile roads" but the utility wanted to use the line that serves its headquarters on the outskirts of town. The ISP linked to the HQ with wireless and coupled that to the power lines outside. By chance, that stretch turned out to be an extremely challenging run of MV lines for BPL, said Spears Sr. The hard part, Spears Jr explained, was the change in voltages "from 7,200 to 14,400 within the line. "It's working fine," he added.

And if it works that well on the toughest part of the grid, the rest of the lines should be "sweet," said Spears Sr. This trial wasn't funded with RUS loans, Spears Jr reported, but if the utility OKs a full deployment AlaWeb plans to approach IBEC for inclusion in a RUS application. IBEC pioneered getting RUS loans for BPL and its second application was in July totaling $50 million for networks at 13 co-ops (BT, 7/25 http://www.bpltoday.com/public/789.cfm).

IBEC sent Kaicom

AlaWeb didn't ask for a specific brand of BPL gear, but "we were definitely waiting on the DS2 chipset," said Spears Jr. "Yes, we knew that much," Spears Sr added. The firm's deal with IBEC reflected a set price for system design and the gear needed -- and the price for repeaters wasn't revealed. We reported last year Kaicom expected to compete on price in the US (BT, 8/22/05 http://www.bpltoday.com/public/437.cfm). IBEC's knowledge and experience in BPL design and engineering was an important part of the deal, said Spears Sr. And the Kaicom gear works as promised. AlaWeb might have not chosen to talk about the specifics of the hardware it bought from IBEC, but thanks to the FCC-decreed BPL database the information is public anyway.

3 mbps turns heads

"We have at least two and half to three megs at every customer," said Spears Sr. He's been told a future firmware upgrade will unleash more bandwidth -- maybe in December. We checked with DS2 to see if the firm is planning a firmware overhaul and found out it's probably the vendor planning the update. We've reported that IBEC promises 256 kbps to the last farm at the end of the road at its co-op deployments.

That blanket promise apparently looks attractive to folks stuck with slow dial-up and satellite service notorious for latency problems that make VOIP unrealistic. AlaWeb wants 10-15 mbps on the backbone -- on the three-phase MV lines, Spears Sr reported, "to build a business model for customer subscriptions," his son added. The six end-users in the trial were pulled from the AlaWeb customer database. The firm hopes to have about five or six more signed up before the trial ends.

Spears Sr was recently in the home of the customer furthest from the internet injection point and recorded 3.1 mbps bandwidth download and 2 mbps upload. Not symmetrical? Not yet, said Spears Sr, "but it's not like cable where you're getting 3-4 megs down and 400 kbps up." If the project moves to full commercial deployment -- the service will be symmetrical, said Spears Sr. AMR is planned for the trial soon, too. Covington has about 25,000 electric customers and 1,500 miles of power lines throughout Southern Alabama.

Ham ills = nil

One of the users in the trial is a licensed amateur radio operator. He's one of hundreds of AlaWeb's 900 mhz wireless broadband customers. The service was activated for a month or so before the user was signed up. He did not report any interference. No one did. That was a relief to the utility, reported Spears Sr.

Line techs like Cooper

A lot of "IBEC's magic ... lies within the Cooper arrestor," Spears Sr reported. IBEC signed up with Cooper Power Systems of Waukesha, Wisc this year to marry IBEC's BPL coupling technology to Cooper's surge arresters (BT, 2/27 http://www.bpltoday.com/public/264.cfm). Apparently the marriage worked.

The IBEC repeaters couple to the power lines via these arrestors -- gear that's well known to utility line workers. "The linemen said immediately, 'oh, there's a Cooper arrestor,'" Spears Jr reported. "It wasn't like this strange animal. It was a little bit different, but they said, 'hey, we work with those every day.'" NOTE: In other news, Cooper bought another well-known grid gear maker Cannon Technologies, the former reported last week (www.cooperpower.com).

Customers are pleased

One of the trial users went around his house with the BPL modem and tried lots of outlets to see if the service was the same throughout. It was. He moved a china closet away from the wall and plugged the modem into his preferred outlet -- and his wife told him to move the furniture back and get a wireless router, Spears Sr reported. He then asked the user for his impression of the service. "'Please don't take it away,'" was the reply. Spears Sr reminded us that his customers are rural.

He's selling services to people who have been underserved because they don't live near a city. "That's why we seem to have such a good relationship so far with IBEC -- because we are rural and they seem to be the only BPL provider that's really got a solution for rural areas."

What about distances?

The idea that BPL could bring broadband to rural areas was one of the technology's first bullet points only to be crushed with real-world predictions that the business case was too hard to make where homes are spread out and counted as miles/customer rather than customers/mile. Then IBEC started raising rural expectations.

How far do you believe you can deliver a quality service to customers with BPL, we asked. Based on the existing trial -- deterioration of service on the five-mile run wasn't an issue. "I feel like if this thing had been 10 miles it would have been no different," said Spears Jr. "We're completely planning on going down 10- or 12-mile taps," added his father, "and we're seeing the same thing at five miles that we've got at three miles, at two miles, at one mile. The quality of service is "not going away."

Distance worries may have been raised by users of G1 gear, said Spears Sr. "Each regenerator does induce latency," Spears Jr added, but the affects at Covington haven't begun to raise concerns. Come December AlaWeb hopes to get Covington's thumbs-up and then work on the business plan begins in earnest (www.alaweb.com, www.cov-elect.com).

Reproduced with permission from GHI, publishers of BPL Today (+1-202-298-8201, www.bpltoday.com)

Posted in News on 2006-09-19.