ISPr Interviews Keith MacLean Over Powerline Broadband

We are currently finalising plans for a wider scale marketing pilot that will also look at an area in the south of England. The results of this, especially the uptake levels, will determine the scale and timing of any further roll-out. SSE covers the areas in north Scotland and central south England. For service to available in other areas the respective electricity distribution company would need to become involved or allow others to use the network for this purpose.

7) Could Powerline technology cover ANY house connected up to SSE's services, or is there some sort of problem / technical and or financial issue to consider first (coverage distance etc.)?

Technically any property can be covered, but we believe at the moment a cell size of 50 users is needed to cover the costs of backhaul etc. This can be reduced by anchor clients from the public sector - schools, libraries, GP's.

8) Under the trial customers can receive an impressive 2Mbit-ps service for just £25 per month, far outstripping most of your competition from ADSL and cable suppliers. How is such a price obtainable (what makes it so much cheaper)?

The price for the trial is set to ensure that a payment is being made, somewhere in line with market rates, but at a reduced level to compensate for the trial nature of the deployment. The planned marketing pilots will look at the appropriate product and price mixes but prices will obviously have to remain attractive and competitive.

9) Technology aside and even a £25 per month price tag must still cover the cost of any bandwidth required or consumed by the user. A number of providers (most notably NTL and BT Broadband) have had to impose download caps (1Gigabyte per day) to stop abuse, does Powerline plan any such restrictions and if not then how are you able to overcome the problem?

PLC management systems allow control of bandwidth utilisation of individual modems - our policy so far has been to allow customers to freely use what is there. To be fair to all users, if anyone were to abuse the system and disadvantage others, some restrictions would have to be applied.

10) Will the final price be more or less than that of the trial?

See No.8

11) What sort of modem/router hardware does it work off and how much will they cost, including any installation fees (will customers require an engineer to install the kit)?

Payment will be for the service and will cover any equipment (PLC modem) needed. It is likely that payment will consist of a connection fee and a monthly rate.

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