BackSystem may work for rural Kentucky
May 8, 2005
By Bill Wolfe
The Courier-Journal
When Harlan County weekly newspaper editor Billy Soloe e-mails the latest issue of the Cloverfork Mountain Times to a London, Ky., printing company, it's an exercise in frustration.
A transmission that might take two minutes over a high-speed connection "turns into a 45-minute to an hour job" on a dial-up Internet account.
And watching a news event over the Internet is next to impossible. "You're going to get choppy pieces of it on dial-up," he said.
"It's driving me nuts," said Soloe. But switching to broadband isn't an option in Cloverfork or many other rural Kentucky communities. There's no DSL, no cable Internet and no broadband through wireless signals.
A solution may be as close as the nearest electric outlet, says an Austin, Texas, company.
Broadband Horizons believes an emerging technology that delivers broadband over power lines will bring fast Internet connections to areas that have been bypassed.
It's "not an end-all for rural markets," acknowledges company President Bobby Mack. But he thinks power-line broadband can play an important role.
"For a small, municipally owned utility, for example, they don't have to wait for the telephone company or the cable company to come in and build infrastructure," Mack said. "It's already there, and it goes into every home."
Computer users simply plug a power-line modem into a standard outlet, and then connect the modem cable to their PC.
The idea that electrical power and Internet signals could share the same copper wire has been around for several years, but recent advances have made such systems faster and more reliable.
The system is in use in Cincinnati, where power company Cinergy teamed with Internet service provider Current Communications. The service is available in a few neighborhoods so far, but Cinergy spokeswoman Kathy Meinke said the companies are considering expanding it into Northern Kentucky and Indiana, where Cinergy/PSI operates in 69 counties.
"I was one of their trial customers," said Jim Rybolt of Cincinnati, who already had DSL but wanted to sample broadband over power lines.
His Internet service from Current Communications costs about $30 per month and has been more reliable than DSL, Rybolt said. It's cheaper and "as fast if not faster" than his former service. "So what's not to like?"
ConnectKentucky, an alliance of technology-minded companies, universities and state agencies working to expand broadband access, thinks the technology might help the state reach Gov. Ernie Fletcher's goal of blanketing Kentucky with high-speed Internet access by 2007.
Success would create a projected 14,000 jobs and generate $5 billion a year in economic activity, according to a ConnectKentucky report.
About 22 percent of Kentucky homes have broadband access -- 10 percentage points below the U.S. average, according to the Harris Poll. About 41 percent of Kentucky businesses had a broadband connection last year, up from 18 percent in 2000, according to a ConnectKentucky survey.
The challenge is to reach isolated areas that have had no chance to choose high-speed Internet service.
"Our real intent is just to find a provider that's willing to go out in gap areas" where sparse population or difficult geography have discouraged broadband providers from investing, said Joe Mefford, statewide broadband director for the alliance. "They're tough ones to fill."
Power-line service is just one of the technologies that might be used, he said. Others include new generations of wireless signals and Internet service via satellite.
Even for power-line broadband, service is more practical in densely populated areas, Broadband Horizons' Mack said. "In the really remote areas, it's going to take some kind of subsidization, a kind of a combination of public and private funds to pull it off," he said. Federal money from agencies such as the U.S. Department of Agriculture is available for broadband projects, he said.
Broadband Horizons is a sister company of Internet provider Momentum Online, which began in 1996 in central Texas.
"We're able to bring broadband to areas that everyone else tended to ignore," said Mack, whose company sees potential profit in areas that other providers might consider too expensive to serve.
The company began working with wireless broadband, but "it tended to be very frustrating," Mack said. "We could only serve about 50 percent of the people that requested service" because of trees or other obstructions that blocked the wireless signal.
That's when Momentum began looking at power lines. What began as a research-and-development project for Momentum turned into Broadband Horizons.
Broadband over power lines probably won't work as a stand-alone technology in rural areas, Mack said. The electric-line signal can travel only about half a mile unless it is boosted periodically. Systems might use wireless signals to carry Internet service from high broadcast points -- such as a hilltop or tall antenna -- to local areas, where it would move into the power line and feed into individual homes and businesses.
Mack projects that entry-level residential service would cost $25 to $29 a month.
Service over power lines requires the approval of the electric companies, and many are not sold on the idea that they can make money delivering Internet service.
Broadband over power lines "has certainly been proven that it can work" from a technical standpoint, said Tom Martin, vice president of technical services for Warren Rural Electric Cooperative Corp., which has been talking to Broadband Horizons. "But what hasn't been proven is ... a clear-cut business case."
He said the cooperative, which provides power to Warren and seven other Kentucky counties, wants to be sure power-line broadband is profitable -- and that it won't quickly be replaced by another technology, such as wireless broadband. He said the utility might consider a pilot program with the Texas company.
At Louisville Gas & Electric Co. and Kentucky Utilities Co., the concerns are similar. "We're in a wait-and-see mode," said Debbie Shobe, spokeswoman for parent company LG&E Energy. "The cost to put the equipment in is very high."
Broadband Horizons recently finished surveys of Bell and Harlan counties and will report to ConnectKentucky on ways to extend broadband to their unserved areas. Depending on the ConnectKentucky response, other county surveys may follow.
"We believe in the technology," Mack said. "For it to make sense
to the community, of course, it has got to make economic sense. And part of
that, I think we will see unfold over the next few months."