Avista goes forward with broadband test

Eastern Washington’s largest electric utility is moving forward with plans to test the idea of providing broadband Internet service over power lines.

The technology, called BPL for short, was recently given a boost when the Federal Communications Commission adopted rules that allow utilities to compete for broadband customers.

At least three Washington utilities and one in Idaho have said they’re pursuing pilot projects for BPL, including Avista Utilities, which serves about 325,000 electricity customers in Washington and Idaho.

The FCC decision lets Avista look for a partner to test BPL in part of its service area, said David Heyamoto, the utility’s market solutions manager.

The system would be especially attractive in areas where people can’t get high-speed broadband service through their phone lines or cable television hookups, he said.

“If we can bring broadband to other areas that now don’t have it, that can become a boost for economic development,” said Heyamoto.

Avista has issued a request for bids, asking service providers to develop a business plan around the BPL idea.

Avista would provide the utility grid and power lines, plus help install any extra equipment needed, said Heyamoto. The partner would manage the data backbone and run the actual business of finding and billing customers.

How much consumers would pay, said Heyamoto, is uncertain. “That’s one thing that we need to find out from whoever comes up with the right business plan,” he said. In some test projects nationwide, prices have been equal to or lower than the DSL service provided over telephone lines, he said.

So far, about a dozen companies have expressed interest. One is from the Northwest, the rest are based on the East Coast, said Avista spokesman Hugh Imhof.

Also indicating interest in the BPL idea are Seattle City Light and the Chelan County Public Utility District. Earlier this month, the Chelan PUD began a BPL test near Peshastin.

John Francisco, information technology manager for Inland Power and Light, based in Spokane, said that utility is studying BPL but isn’t sure it’s economically viable yet.

“Most of our customers are in rural locations (in Washington and Idaho),” he said. As BPL moves out from an urban center, a piece of equipment called a repeater needs to be added roughly every mile, he said, to ensure the signal strength remains high. Right now, those repeaters are expensive.

“My personal hope is the FCC ruling steers more development money into the BPL technology,” Francisco said. Inland Power has about 27,000 customers in 13 Idaho and Washington counties.

The technology uses a special modem that plugs into electrical outlets or connects via a wireless device. A BPL customer’s modem can take the digital data encoded into the AC current and deliver it to the user at speeds about as fast as cable modems do today, said Heyamoto.

The reason the data isn’t lost or distorted by the AC current, is that the voltage and the data are transmitted at different frequencies, he said.

The goal is to select a pilot project partner by the end of the year. The test itself would begin sometime in 2005, Imhof said.