Verizon might be in a bind soon:

[LonghornXP]

I've just got word from a contact at my local power company Progress Energy in the Tampa Bay Area of Florida of their upcoming plans. These plans eventually should be rolled out over all Progress Energy areas to all customers. Because of this I also believe many other power companies will follow suit. To start they can upgrade areas much cheaper than Verizon can because they don't need to replace lines or dig up areas. Most of the work is done at the plant with a few additions to existing power lines.

They will be offering the triple three bundle which will include local and long distance phone service, high speed internet and video service. They will be using a QAM based system with switched video technology. They will offer tons of channels including HDTV and VOD at a great price. They tell me that if you get high speed internet and all the video services and channels in their bundle it will be about 40 bucks a month cheaper than the same BHN package. Their best package which will include unlimited long distance phone service, all video channels and services and high speed internet will be about 50 bucks a month cheaper than the same BHN package. All this will be on your power bill so everything will be on one bill.

The system they will use will be very very easy to install because they will have adapters for everything.

For phone service they will have an adapter that plugs into any power jack and it will have one standard phone jack on it. If you get phone service and high speed internet you will get a modem with the phone jack on it. You will need both the modem and a coax adapter. The coax adapter will plug into the power jack while the coax cable would plug into the modem itself. The modem would also need power as you might guess. All TVs will require the power coax adapter. They will have a nice 90+ channel analog lineup that won't require a box while everything else will require the rental of a digital/HDTV box.

For DVR products they will have a power/coax adapter that will have two coax cable connectors on it for two tuner DVR ability. You can install a jack anywhere you want just by plugging the adapter into another power jack. As long as you have a power jack close by that jack can be a phone line, internet line and/or a video line. No new wires have to be installed unless that room doesn't have a power jack. They will also support multiroom DVR viewing as well.

Beyond that I don't have any other information nor do I have any timeframes on rollouts. What I do know is that their cost per customers to obtain them will be around 300 bucks compared to Verizons plus 1000 bucks. They will save on installs because no techs will need to deal with running a jack via the wall. That means that customers can have a tech install everything very quickly while customers who want to do it themselves can drive by their local power company store and order service, take the hardware home and plug it all in themselves. They don't need to access anything but the customers house to install service and that is only if the customer needs a tech to install it for them. Also their modem for internet will be a built-in router and will be a PPPoE modem which will store the user name and password to get online.

This will give Verizon a run for their money because Verizon can't do this that cheap nor can the installs be done this easily and cheap.

Also I'm hearing that the high speed internet plan that will be part of the bundles will be 15Mbps both up and down. Their system won't allow them to have the down be different from the up. So whatever their download is their upload must be the same speed. They also have plans when technology matures to support different up and down speeds to upgrade customers to 100Mbps down and 15Mbps up.

From what I hear it seems that they are holding off on upgrading their plants until a ruling is made regarding state level franchise agreements.

 

[korsjs]

wow, thanks for sharing. 15 up and down is impressive. i might be changing my tune when it comes to fios tv if this is going to be cheaper and better.

 

[Sean Mota]

Bring it on... But I know my electric company will be the last to move on this. They move at the speed of a turtle.

 

[korsjs]

how is tampa area fortunate enought to be one of the initial markets for all these new technologies? i know we are growing, but we are not one of the major cities yet.

 

[LonghornXP]

how is tampa area fortunate enought to be one of the initial markets for all these new technologies? i know we are growing, but we are not one of the major cities yet.

When this area was Time Warner Cable we were one of the top 5 markets in total number of customers for Time Warner Cable. We are a very big market for video services. This area also has one of the largest amount of digital cable customers and high speed internet customers.

To give you an idea I was one of the few people who got to trial Earthlink high speed over powerline before Progress Energy scrapped the service so they could rollout their own service along with other new services such as video. It got for about 6 months speeds of 25Mbps down and 25Mbps UP which I paid only 39.99/month for. I was under an NDA at that time when it came to speeds even though I could say I was testing it and what I was paying. Now that my NDA is up I can now say this. To be honest those speeds really put Verizon to shame but when you look at it they were just testing it and I highly doubt that non testing customers would ever get those speeds. I also got fiber in Pinellas County about 7 months ago because my area was newly built and they just decided to outfit our centrol office. Very very few areas in Pinellas Country have been wired and even though I have fiber service for internet I will end up having to wait until enough of Pinellas County has been wired because until that time my city won't be getting a franchise agreement in place. This is one reason why I'm hoping that a statewide agreement would be in place because that would mean that my centrol office could start sending video services without a local city agreement. Unless that happens I'll be waiting about 1-2 years.

Sadly Pinellas County could have great video and internet service from Progress Energy before Verizon gets the wiring in place. Also those of you in the Tampa Bay Area that have TECO might not see these new broadband services. To get these new services your power company must be Progress Energy.

 

[digitalworld]

Interesting. I've heard of BPL but can't say that I've heard of deploying QAM based swtiched video over a BPL network. The array of new technology is dizzying... Keep us posted as this could a significant development.

At the very least, it sounds like BPL has advanced quite a bit and glad to hear you had such impressive performance during your data trial.

 

[Stargazer]

I thought that they were having interference issues with Ham/CB operators?

 

[Juan]

I've just got word from a contact at my local power company Progress Energy in the Tampa Bay Area of Florida of their upcoming plans. These plans eventually should be rolled out over all Progress Energy areas to all customers. Because of this I also believe many other power companies will follow suit. To start they can upgrade areas much cheaper than Verizon can because they don't need to replace lines or dig up areas. Most of the work is done at the plant with a few additions to existing power lines.

They will be offering the triple three bundle which will include local and long distance phone service, high speed internet and video service. They will be using a QAM based system with switched video technology. They will offer tons of channels including HDTV and VOD at a great price. They tell me that if you get high speed internet and all the video services and channels in their bundle it will be about 40 bucks a month cheaper than the same BHN package. Their best package which will include unlimited long distance phone service, all video channels and services and high speed internet will be about 50 bucks a month cheaper than the same BHN package. All this will be on your power bill so everything will be on one bill.

The system they will use will be very very easy to install because they will have adapters for everything.

For phone service they will have an adapter that plugs into any power jack and it will have one standard phone jack on it. If you get phone service and high speed internet you will get a modem with the phone jack on it. You will need both the modem and a coax adapter. The coax adapter will plug into the power jack while the coax cable would plug into the modem itself. The modem would also need power as you might guess. All TVs will require the power coax adapter. They will have a nice 90+ channel analog lineup that won't require a box while everything else will require the rental of a digital/HDTV box.

For DVR products they will have a power/coax adapter that will have two coax cable connectors on it for two tuner DVR ability. You can install a jack anywhere you want just by plugging the adapter into another power jack. As long as you have a power jack close by that jack can be a phone line, internet line and/or a video line. No new wires have to be installed unless that room doesn't have a power jack. They will also support multiroom DVR viewing as well.

Beyond that I don't have any other information nor do I have any timeframes on rollouts. What I do know is that their cost per customers to obtain them will be around 300 bucks compared to Verizons plus 1000 bucks. They will save on installs because no techs will need to deal with running a jack via the wall. That means that customers can have a tech install everything very quickly while customers who want to do it themselves can drive by their local power company store and order service, take the hardware home and plug it all in themselves. They don't need to access anything but the customers house to install service and that is only if the customer needs a tech to install it for them. Also their modem for internet will be a built-in router and will be a PPPoE modem which will store the user name and password to get online.

This will give Verizon a run for their money because Verizon can't do this that cheap nor can the installs be done this easily and cheap.

Also I'm hearing that the high speed internet plan that will be part of the bundles will be 15Mbps both up and down. Their system won't allow them to have the down be different from the up. So whatever their download is their upload must be the same speed. They also have plans when technology matures to support different up and down speeds to upgrade customers to 100Mbps down and 15Mbps up.

From what I hear it seems that they are holding off on upgrading their plants until a ruling is made regarding state level franchise agreements.

Nothing personal But I think many many consumers are gonna be gun shy about hooking up their expensive home theater equipment to a power line. What happens if lightnig strikes a power line and the filter breaks? answer zzzzzap!!!

 

[korsjs]

you do make a valid point, but i think they will have it worked out.

 

[Juan]

I think the technolgy will be pretty safe however its the consumer's perception ( ie 110 volts running thru their phone when it really isnt) that will be extremly hard to overcome

 

[LonghornXP]

I think the technolgy will be pretty safe however its the consumer's perception ( ie 110 volts running thru their phone when it really isnt) that will be extremly hard to overcome

It will be a safe system and I'm not worried about about consumers with that perception for these reasons below.

I've seen more people plug in their big screen TV set into the actual wall jack instead of a UPS or surge protector. Secondly I also see tons of people who don't use a surge protector that has a phone line or cable jack for their DSL, dialup and/or cable internet connection.

Heck most people who do use a surge protector for their computer don't use it for their printer and what they fail to understand is that if your printer gets a surge it will always look for a ground and that most likely would be down the USB cable into the computer as it travels the easiest way towards the computers ground which most likely is through most of the motherboard into the power connector which travels out the power supply down the power supplies power cable into the wall jack until it gets outside and hits the ground.

The fact is that customers will view this adapter as another device that plugs into their power jack and if it breaks the power company will replace it. Customers will think that if their cable box is plugged into a power jack what is so different about this adapter.

 

[David_Levin]

I'm in wait and see mode. Like the phone companies, the power company is trying to jam high bandwidth data over a set of wires that aren't designed for it.

Let's see, power lines currently carry 60 Hz. Coax is at 2,000,000,000 Hz (or better).

 

[mdonnelly]

So if you have a power conditioner on your home line, won't it try to clean up the signal that modulates the sine wave? Wouldn't that strip away the data?

 

[Walter L.]

I think the technolgy will be pretty safe however its the consumer's perception ( ie 110 volts running thru their phone when it really isnt) that will be extremly hard to overcome

Another (wrong) consumer perception might be that the electrical bill goes up if they hook up more phones, PC's, TV's. :shocked

 

[Stargazer]

Just as you say that power lines were not made for television, broadband, and phone, the phone lines were not made for dialup internet or DSL, but it does the job. I am sure there are other things out there that were not designed for particular things but were made to work for other things.

I wonder what other possibilities there are out there similar to this.

 

[LonghornXP]

Just as you say that power lines were not made for television, broadband, and phone, the phone lines were not made for dialup internet or DSL, but it does the job. I am sure there are other things out there that were not designed for particular things but were made to work for other things.

I wonder what other possibilities there are out there similar to this.

Cell phones aren't designed for aholes in cars!

 

[cdru]

I'm in wait and see mode. Like the phone companies, the power company is trying to jam high bandwidth data over a set of wires that aren't designed for it.

Let's see, power lines currently carry 60 Hz. Coax is at 2,000,000,000 Hz (or better).

Phone and cable companies don't have a whole lot to worry about in the immedate future. Every attempt at BPL has gone no where. I don't think that there are any large scale, self funding installations of BPL in the US although I know of several smaller, limited attempts.

Electrical lines are incredibly noisy and have relatively low available bandwidth amounts just do to all the error correction that has to take place. There is a reason why it's advised not to run data cables with power cables. Also, by nature of the design, every transformer between you and the "central office" must also have a bridge put on it to pass the high frequency data. So it's not just as simple as plugging a cable into a jack and you are good to go...there is a lot to be done inbetween.

BPL may be a power company wetdream, but it's not all that it's cracked up to be. From what I've seen, Verizon is going at it the most future proof way. Yeah it's the most expensive, but it potentially can be capitalized over decades with relatively minor upgrade costs as technology improves. From the way the BPL was written up, 15mbit sounded like the high end of the available speed. 15mbits is at the very low end for the potential for fiber. SBC, with it's hybrid fiber/VDSL2 network is taking a little more cautious wait-and-see approach. They are letting Verizon be the test dummy. If Verizon seems to take off, all of SBC's upgrades will not be for naught.

 

[Stargazer]

Verizon running these fiber optic lines at a great expense makes me look at things this way. Look at all the years where the phone lines were used until now for phone service along with data services. There has been a lot of money made off of those lines. If I am not mistaken the fiber optic lines are being ran undeground therefore they will not have to replace the lines over and over and over like they had to the traditional phone lines. This in itself will help make up for a lot of costs over time as it will require little or no maintenance. Going from traditional phone lines to fiber optics is just like going from analog to digital for them. They would plan on using these fiber optics for years to come just as they did with the traditional phone lines. The fiber optic lines having multiple uses is another plus which makes it like running three lines in one. It would be for television, phone, and internet services, and perhaps other services we do not currently have today that we have not thought of yet.

I wonder if they ran the fiber optics in a specific type of pipe/tubing to where they can pull out the old lines and put in new if it gets damaged or needs to be upgraded again in the future so that they do not have to unbury it from the ground to access it.

BPL having a limit of 15 mbps might be low but it is more than what most can currently get and would suffice for most applications for years to come. It would be a bit cheaper and faster than running new fiberoptic lines everywhere. It would probably still be a bit cheaper even if they had to do a bit to prepare the electric lines to make them work. They would reach people way out in the country as well. It would be like shooting two birds with one stone by having one line having everything available on it.

 

[hbk409]

If I am not mistaken the fiber optic lines are being ran undeground therefore they will not have to replace the lines over and over and over like they had to the traditional phone lines..

where i am in long island, all the fiber is above ground right beneath the conventional telephone lines on the pole

 

[LonghornXP]

I've seen fiber on the poles as well. In my case the fiber around our area is underground but that might have todo with the fact that we have ocean in our back yards. If they didn't put everything underground they would be replacing everything every year maybe twice a year.