Professional Documents
Culture Documents
T
ourists have come for de- from Washington’s Dulles Interna- electrical grid, providing a telecom
cades to historic Manassas tional Airport. About 80 percent of connection to the distribution switch,
Virginia to view the scene the city-owned electrical grid is un- and installing the equipment. In addi-
of several bloody Civil derground and is supported by nearly tion to the revenue, the city also gets
War battles. Lately, however, the city 2,000 transformers. That entire un- a substantial benefit from the result-
has seen an influx of visitors with an derground infrastructure makes the ing real-time monitoring of its electri-
inclination to stick around and ask deployment of any new cable a daunt- cal service – an inherent side effect of
questions of a more technical nature. ing task. That’s why BPL is so attrac- piping data over the grid.
Manassas has one of the world’s first tive as an alternative there. The attraction is obvious. What
fully commercialized deployments of The city installs a device at each of municipal utility wouldn’t want to
Broadband Powerline (BPL) technolo- its 600-ampere distribution switches foster local broadband competition
gy. Residents in many parts of the city that injects Ethernet data onto the while collecting additional revenue
can plug a modem into an electrical electrical grid. From each switch, from an existing asset? It is even more
outlet and receive DSL-speed Internet anywhere from 50 to 75 customers can attractive when you consider that
access. receive 500 Kbps service with present Manassas entered the business by sim-
The telecom and electric utility technology and up to 1.5 Mbps with ply enabling an Ethernet data service.
industries have taken notice, and the next generation solutions. The city avoided the protracted legal
Manassas network has been studied Between the subscriber and the battles and negative public relations
by visitors from around the U.S. and distribution switch, repeaters are in- campaigns that often accompany pub-
as far away as Tokyo. The attention is stalled at smaller stepdown street- lic-power forays into legacy services
well deserved. The discerning visitor, level transformers and occasionally in such as voice and video.
however, will note that the Manassas a resident’s home electrical meter base
BPL deployment has a fiber-rich diet. (depending on the home’s distance Key Technical Issues
Signals come to the home through the from the transformer). The cost of do- BPL, however, is not without its
electric lines, but fiber carries the data ing business is attractive. With an av- pitfalls. The interference controversy
to the switches in the first place. This erage of 7.5 customers per street-level – the data signal can be broadcast over
is not an incidental fact. The city’s fi- transformer, and assuming a modest transformers if allowed to traverse the
ber optic backhaul solution was a well penetration rate of 20 percent, it costs transformer switches directly -- is well
conceived and thoroughly considered between $400 to $650 per customer to documented. Fortunately, it appears
way to further economic development build this network from the distribu- to be solvable, and might have been
objectives and mitigate the risks as- tion switch and provide the subscriber a little overstated from the beginning.
sociated with new technology. BPL with a modem that can be used at any But another issue looms large for
at Manassas includes one of the most electrical outlet in the city where the any public power company deploying
clever fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP) service is offered. BPL, and that is an issue of timing.
deployments in North America. Perhaps best of all, the City of While proponents of BPL sing the
Manassas doesn’t actually purchase merits of easy installation and ubiqui-
System Basics any BPL equipment. A third-party ISP tous infrastructure, pundits are quick
The Manassas Department of Utili- is the actual service provider. The City to point out that BPL is coming into
ties serves 15,000 electric meters in a Utility Department collects a piece of its own just as fiber-to-the-home tech-
city that is only a twenty-minute drive the revenue by allowing access to the nologies are hitting their stride. For a
developed a power utility team with but without exhausting the capacity lution that was originally conceived to
skills in splicing, testing, and trou- of the available unused fiber. support fiber-to-the-home. This tech-
bleshooting fiber optic networks. nology allows a carrier to physically
Consequently, the backhaul project PON Versus ATM “split” a single optical fiber so that
would begin with a significant piece Connecting to the BPL network it can serve up to 32 locations with
installed, and all planning and con- with a traditional dedicated fiber pair high-speed data. It is the same basic
struction to finish the project would from the central equipment room was concept that is employed in the fiber-
happen with internal resources. This not a viable option. Such an unimagi- to-the-home deployments of Verizon,
would be fiber-to-the-premises on a native approach would have quickly SBC, NTT (Japan), and countless
limited scale and a tight budget. depleted the available fiber resources, smaller carriers. From a fiber conser-
While the existing fiber infrastruc- and made necessary an overbuild of vation standpoint, the PON idea was
ture passed through much of the city, the entire infrastructure. This could a slam dunk for Manassas. However,
it did not service the distribution not happen. Therefore, the city be- PON as implemented by the typical
switches where it was needed to feed gan looking for solutions and quickly telephone company had some short-
the BPL equipment. The task of the discovered PON, or “Passive Optical comings in a HFBPL deployment.
Utility Department was to connect Network” technology. Most PON technologies deployed
those switches to the existing plant, PON is a standards-based fiber so- in North America are based on ATM
Left: City map of Manassas showing how the city has been divided into several “BPL areas” to assist with network planning. Right: Map
of BPL area 303 (it is southernmost area on city map). Orange line indicates the E-PON fiber route, red circles indicate the HFBPL node
locations (where E-PON meets the BPL). Blue lines indicate BPL network operating over the existing power grid.
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The cost for any public power com-
$4,600,000 ��������������� munity to adopt a fiber-based eco-
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$3,600,000
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prisingly low. It has been proven, and
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is now one more history lesson from
$2,600,000 Northern Virginia. ◆
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