The big Q

Eight southwest Rochester homeowners and two businesses have enjoyed broadband service since July, courtesy of RPU's test.

The service so far has received mostly positive reviews.

"It works, it proved out," said Dan Sturm, RPU's supervisor of technical services. "There wer issues with it, but they were somewhat minor issues."

Broadband over Power Lines, or BPL as it is called, delivers high-speed communications using standard electrical lines.

The present technology makes Internet access and telephone services possible, Sturm said, and the ability to offer television service is on the horizon about a year from now.

Test participants routinely get two-way data transmission speeds between 400 and 600 kilobytes per second, Sturm said. That's slightly faster than the posted speed limit for downloads on Charter Communications' basic 384 kilobyte Internet service.

Homeowners in particular seem to have liked the service, Sturm said. Most of the problems have cropped up in testing at the two businesses, HY-Vee South and First Baptist Church.

The data signal seems to lose power after going through the transformers commonly found at large commercial buildings, Sturm said.

Placing a repeater at the transformer, he said, seems to help solve the problem. RPU and its private partner, Hiawatha Broadband Communications of Winona, are using equipment supplied by Main.net Powerline Communications, a subsidiary of an Israel-based telecommunications company.

The equipment and technical support were not wholly satisfactory, Sturm said, and early next year RPU and Hiawatha intend to test new equipment supplied by Current Technologies of Germantown, Md.

The next phase of testing will be done at an equal or lower cost to RPU than the first phase, Sturm said. RPU and Hiawatha have evenly split their costs so far.

Beyond that, Sturm said, the future of BPL in Rochester is hard to see. Before long, there will be questions to be answered regarding the financing, the business model and, yes, the politics of RPU offering a competitive telecommunications service.

"It's going to be one step at a time," Sturm said.