ISPr Interviews Keith MacLean Over Powerline Broadband

This slow rollout of affordable solutions, of which Satellite access can not be included (too expensive and restrictive), has dogged the governments ‘Broadband Britain’ progress and irritated many a rural resident, yet this may soon be resolved.

For some time now there has been a technology capable of reaching every home in the country via nothing more than a standard power plug. Imaginatively named ‘Powerline’, Scottish Hydro-Electric ( http://www.hydro.co.uk/broadband ) has recently become the first UK Company to successfully employ its use.

Technical issues and regulatory concerns had been a major barrier to past projects, yet thankfully SSE has been able to overcome these and is now working steadily toward offering a national service.

Despite this, very little is known about just how viable Powerline would be for an average consumer and whether or not a truly national scale rollout would be feasible. Thankfully ISP Review was able to track down Keith MacLean, whom is responsible for the telecom’s division - SSE Telecom:

1) Who are you and what do you do?

My name is Keith MacLean and I run SSE Telecom, the telecoms business of Scottish and Southern Energy.

2) Can you give us a brief technical run down of how Powerline technology works?

The system works in a similar manner to DSL in that a radio signal (1.6MHz - 30MHz) is carried along the copper cables of the power network from point to point, or point to multi-point. Once we have enabled a network, all the customer needs to do is plug the modem into any mains socket and link up to the PC through Ethernet or USB.

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