Motorola on Monday unveiled its first high-speed powerline Internet product for utility companies in the United States by introducing a low-voltage wireless technology at the United Telecom Council convention in Long Beach, Calif.
Motorola asserts the technology is less vulnerable to high-frequency interference and less costly than current high-speed equipment running over power grids.
Motorola also announced its first broadband powerline customer: Broad River Electric, a cooperative in upstate South Carolina supporting approximately 25,000 rural utility customers. Broad River and New Horizon Electric Cooperative, which provides networking communications and project management support to the coop, forged a pact with Motorola to launch powerline communications in Broad River’s territory.
Motorola says only three pieces of equipment are needed to connect a customer to the broadband network: the equipment maker‘s “Powerline LV” (low voltage) access point cluster, an integrated antenna and bridge router and HomePlug modem.
Michael Varner, vice president for information services with New Horizon, says Motorola’s wireless product is significantly more affordable compared to equipment that would have been installed along miles and miles of medium voltage lines on infrastructure that is vulnerable to lightning and other natural elements. Varner could not provide a hard number on the cost savings through Motorola but said during a press conference the “financial model collapsed” under the previous design.
During an interview Varner said Broad River is going to begin marketing the service in areas where there are no high-speed Internet alternatives.
“The vast majority of our customers do not have a choice,” he says, adding customers say they would defect to a cooperative from DSL or cable if they had an alternative.
A Motorola executive said Monday the company is initially supporting download Internet speeds of three megabits per second to 6 Mpbs at the home.
Motorola introduced its product amid rising support for broadband service over the power lines. Approximately 50 utilities in the United States have deployed high-speed Internet service either commercially or in trials over the power grids.
Motorola executives say the company has been in discussions with larger investor-owned utilities about the powerline communications technology, which is based partly on a Motorola platform that has been used by utilities to support internal applications.
As many as 13 million homes, or 11 percent of the U.S. population, cannot receive broadband service from traditional phone or cable companies, according to Motorola. Some regulators have expressed optimism that utilities could close that gap by delivering high-speed Internet service over the power grid. Many utilities both large and small are still studying the technology.
During a speech Monday morning before the UTC convention, Southern California Edison President Bob Foster said the company was evaluating powerline communications technology.
“The potential for broadband over powerline is exciting,” he said.
Executives from Motorola and other companies are hopeful that large utilities could build powerline communications systems and partner with such Internet providers as AOL and Earthlink Inc. Unlike the big phone and cable companies, these ISPs do not own networks extending to homes and need to connect to the underlying infrastructure to serve customers.
