Partnership Between City, COMTek Seen As Successful Model For Utilities Seeking to Provide Broadband Alternative in Areas With Little Or No Access.
MANASSAS, VA. | October 5, 2005 | The 37,000-person Washington, D.C. suburb of Manassas, Virginia, is now home to a major national success story in broadband access: the first city-wide commercial deployment of broadband-over-powerline (BPL) technology anywhere in the United States, according to Communication Technologies, Inc. (COMTek), the Chantilly, Va.-based “Inc. 500” company that owns and operates the BPL network in Manassas. BPL technology uses the electricity grid in a city and the wiring in individual homes to provide direct “plug in” broadband access through electricity sockets, rather than over phone or cable TV lines.
COMTek said that the roughly 12,500 households in Manassas now are within the reach of its BPL network and that commercial services are available throughout the city to 2,500 businesses on an on-demand basis. COMTek already has an estimated 700 customers in Manassas, with another 500 requests for service now being processed. In addition to Manassas, COMTek is in negotiations to deliver similar services for nine other investor-owned utilities, municipal-owned utilities, and other entities.
COMTek Founder and CEO Joseph E. Fergus said: “This is truly a historic day for COMTek, which is the U.S. leader in broadband over powerline services. The major national technology milestone that we are announcing today with the City of Manassas is the most eloquent possible expression of our commitment to grow the BPL category of broadband access. Make no mistake about it: What we are announcing today in Manassas is something that we could be rolling out in a year or two from now in literally scores of communities across the U.S. The Manassas experiment is a good thing for every American who lives in any city or town with little or no access to affordable broadband.”
City of Manassas Mayor Douglas Waldron said: “Manassas resolved to move forward with broadband over powerline as a major enhancement of what our city-owned utility provides to its customers. COMTek accepted the challenge of working with us by building a BPL network that would serve all of our citizens. This has proven to be an extraordinarily positive and results-oriented partnership in which every citizen of Manassas can take pride. We have accomplished something here that will be a model for other cities and towns across the United States.”
Congressman Frank Wolf (R-VA) said: “Congress is looking closely at ways to improve broadband access in rural and other non-urban settings and that is why I am so encouraged by the Manassas success with broadband over powerline. The City of Manassas and COMTek are to be applauded for their leadership roles in pioneering access in a way that has never been achieved anywhere else in the United States. Now, the challenge before us is to make this same sort of success story blossom across the nation.”
American Public Power Association President and CEO Mr. Alan H. Richardson said: “The American Public Power Association’s member-supported Demonstration of Energy-Efficient Developments (DEED) program provided a grant in 2001 to the City of Manassas for the initial investigation of how BPL could provide Internet access to consumers and businesses, while enhancing the efficiency and reliability of the electric utility. The City of Manassas has led the way for many other community-owned electric utilities. Its successful deployment and ‘lessons learned’ will help other public power communities evaluate the communications and utility opportunities of this technology.”
In July 2004, the City of Manassas selected COMTek to provide BPL services over the city’s electric system. COMTek owns and operates the BPL network and also serves as the ISP, providing email and Web hosting services for customers. COMTek signs up and services the needs of Manassas customers. The City of Manassas provides utility staff to install BPL couplers and repeaters and to maintain the fiber connections that link COMTek servers and routers to the power lines. The city receives a portion of subscriber revenues to offset the manpower and equipment resources that they contribute to the BPL services.
In addition to delivering broadband access to residential and commercial customers, COMTek has enabled the Manassas utility to save money and respond more quickly in identifying outages at both the transformer and customer level, central control for traffic signals, and operating video surveillance systems at substations. The City is exploring opportunities to use BPL for other advanced utility applications such as automatic distribution switching, which would restore power more quickly to the grid after outages, and automated meter reading, which already is available on the Manassas network.
In February 2005, COMTek was identified as a national leader in broadband-over-powerline technology by a report from the New Millennium Research Council (NMRC). The report noted that trials and actual commercial deployments of BPL systems are on the rise, with over 20 projects in operation in 2004 and more expected to come online in 2005. Roughly a quarter million homes in the United States already had the opportunity to choose BPL services in 2004, according to NMRC.
Major investments in BPL technology have been announced in recent months by such major entities as Google, Hearst and Goldman Sachs. Both the White House and Federal Communications Commission (FCC) have highlighted BPL technology as an important way to get broadband access to underserved portions of the nation.
HOW BPL WORKS
Broadband over power line is the transmission of high-speed communications services, including Internet access, over the existing electric infrastructure using adaptive technologies. The wires that carry electricity, either on poles above ground or through underground pipes, possess the capacity to also serve as a conduit for data signals. These power lines are known as medium voltage, carrying between 1,000 and 32,000 volts of electricity and travel the distances between power substations and the customer’s household or building. The electric lines that connect to a household or other building from the utility pole are known as low voltage, transmitting 120/240/480 volts.
By bundling radio-frequency (RF) energy on the same line with the electric current that is already carried, data can be transmitted without the need for a separate line. Since the electric current, which is used to provide power to the end users, and RF energy signals carrying the data operate at different frequencies (with electric current traveling at lower frequencies and data at higher levels), the two don't interfere with each other.
Technological advances in the past several years have enabled electric companies to place devices along existing wires and poles to provide broadband services. Known as Access BPL, the systems require a connection from the Internet backbone at a power substation, repeaters (in some cases) and couplers along the medium voltage power lines that transmit the data signals, and then a final converter that transfers the signal from the medium voltage to the low voltage lines that go into homes. Once inside the home, the signal can be accessed at any electrical outlet with a BPL modem.
ABOUT COMTek
Headquartered in Chantilly, Va., Communication Technologies, Inc. (http://www.comtechnologies.com) is a cutting-edge telecommunications, managed services and training company. As part of its worldwide broadband service, COMTek owns and operates in the City of Manassas, Va., what is the first commercial broadband over powerline network to be delivered in the United States on a city-wide basis. Founded in 1990, COMTek has rapidly grown to 900 employees in greater Washington, D.C. area and elsewhere in the United States.
On December 1, 2004, COMTek announced that it had been named by Inc. magazine as one of the 500 fastest-growing privately held companies in the United States. The COMTek success story made the company a natural for inclusion on the “Inc. 500” hottest company list. COMTek’s total growth, as measured by average annual sales revenues, was up 303 percent from 1999 to 2003 and its employee ranks more than doubled during calendar year 2002.
