Broadband over Power Line (UK)

OPERA - European standard for Broadband over Power Line (BPL)

A European Union 20m Euro funded project called The Open PLC European research alliance - Opera, has recently delivered its specification for BPL standards. This is the first open BPL specification and clears the way for technology providers to be interoperable products. I have to be honest and admit that whilst I thought the project would be interesting, I didn't think we would be getting proper commercial quality outputs, how wrong I was.

The Key Features:
+200 Mbps OFDM Modulation
Configurable frequency bands
frequency band notching dynamically and remotely
Special robust mode for reliability in difficult channels
Technology independent coexistence layer
3DES encryption
Impulsive noise mitigation techniques
Time and frequency division repeaters, unlimited number of repeaters to guarantee full coverage
Quality of Service (QoS) with 8 priority levels
Bandwidth control
Spatial Reuse Algorithm
PHY spectral efficiency up to 8 bits/sec/Hz

If all that means something to you, you'll realise how good this stuff is. If it doesn't mean anything to you, please take my word for it, it's good stuff.

The standards have been field tested in four European countries, using equipment built in accordance with the standards. The customer satisfaction surveys are fantastic for internet access, less so for VoIP telephony.

All of the project outputs are available on the Opera website at
http://www.ist-opera.org/project_outputs_available.html.htm , you'll have to provide your details to gain access to some of the documents.

Interestingly, Ascom, an Opera partner company that built much of the equipment used in the field trials announced last week that they had sold their BPL/PLC communications business to Current Communications. Current Communications is one of the most interesting companies in the BPL arena having recently attracted huge investment from Goldman, Sachs & Co., Google, The Hearst Corporation and TXU. They have also announced a $150 million 10 year deal with TXU to roll out BPL, starting this year, to approximately 2 million premises in the Dallas/Fort Worth area.

posted by Energy Broadband @ 1:13 AM