Smartgrid2: We were right about cable modems and BPL is next

Former European cable execs see BPL parallels

Firm poised to ease BPL’s entry into Europe

Reproduced from the Jan 30 issue of BPL Today with the permission of the publisher, GHI LLC (202-298-8201, www.bpltoday.com).

Two former vice presidents of reportedly Europe ’s largest triple play firm started a BPL integrator/operator called Smartgrid2.

Tom Walsh and Patricia McGrath were executives at UPC Broadband — now owned by Liberty Global. The Netherlands-based firm grew from a 200-user cable modem trial network in Amsterdam in the mid 90s to a customer base of over 1.5 million cable broadband subscribers in 14 countries in 2002. Walsh was vice president of engineering and then operations and McGrath was vice president of network planning and implementation.

The two left UPC and in 2005 they started Smartgrid2 in Ireland . They looked at various alternative technologies and soon found BPL.Smartgrid2 is convinced BPL is the technology it had been looking for and set its sights on deploying BPL for utility services and retail triple play throughout Europe .

Walsh and McGrath spoke to us Thursday from their headquarters in County Kerry in Southwest Ireland .Walsh is CTO and McGrath is director.“ Europe will offer incredible opportunity for ‘smart grid’ technology players for the next 10 years,” said Walsh. He believes the key for BPL technology firms to succeed in Europe will be to maintain a presence without draining resources and funds.

Smartgrid2 ( www.smartgrid2.com ) is set up to help. The firm’s been trying to land BPL projects with utilities but like everywhere, European utilities have resisted.

EU’s pushing BPL

“Utilities have been slow to come to the table so far — but here in Europe the EU is actively pushing the technology,” said Walsh. Why is the government of Europe pushing BPL?

A BPL initiative is underway to “overcome the energy challenges presented by a rapidly expanding [EU] membership where demand is outstripping supply,” Walsh reported. He and McGrath are involved in that government effort and they’re confident “it will happen,” she added. The firm wants to introduce to Europe some of the main players in the BPL world “that have existing and proven technologies and proven business cases so that we can jump start some technology trials.

“We believe that some of the strongest players have a great opportunity to be in at the beginning” — with a real possibility to turn those trials into commercial deployments.

Smartgrid2 hopes to avoid “open-ended science experiments — that I think have been some people’s experience in the past,” said McGrath. Some of the utilities in the EU are trying to “reinvent the wheel,” she added — and Smartgrid2 wants to show them wheels are “already out there,” she added.

The challenge for Smartgrid2 is to make deals with international BPL technology firms including US firms and represent them in Europe .

The name says it all

Smartgrid2 learned early that utilities aren’t usually interested in hype about the broadband business. True to its name, the firm is focused on utility applications and sees that market offering huge potential. Commercial broadband is a side benefit that can be delivered by firms that lease bandwidth from the utility, he noted.

But the need for the 21st century smart grid is urgent. The EU grew from 15 to 27 countries in the last 3 years, Walsh reminded. Many have rapidly growing economies that are putting incredible demand on power grids.

These states have limited raw resources for energy production and a lack of organization in the power interconnection between countries. The EU doesn’t have a system to manage the grid or know “who’s producing power” and who’s using it.

“Smart grid efficiency and control are finally being seen as the way to integrate and manage the various networks” — and cut reliance on generators outside the Union , said Walsh.

Meanwhile less developed nations in the EU are trying to build their economies and getting access to broadband is a key ingredient. “Pilot projects are being planned to take the best existing solutions and test them for commercial roll-outs throughout Europe .”

Walsh expects BPL’s role to expand as green power generation projects such as home-based generation, solar panels, wind farms, tidal power and more start populating the grid. Interconnection with those projects will make managing the reliability of the grid ever more complicated — and some look to BPL as an obvious answer to managing that complexity.

They saw cable get smart

BPL reminds Walsh of the early days of cable. People in 1997 told him cable modem networks “couldn’t happen, it wouldn’t work — we were dreaming.” BPL is in roughly the same position as cable was then — with a lack of standards, some engineering challenges in creating networks plus it’s got its nay sayers.

The broadband boom in Europe was similar to “the wave that’s building for smart grids. ”Cable traditionally was a one-way, wire-based distribution network. Sounds familiar.

Cable modem technology introduced tremendous advantages by adding IP to those networks.

Suddenly the operator could see the condition of every piece of gear on the network all the way to the customer’s modem.

That gave Walsh a brand new kind of power in making financial decisions. He could make choices on where to spend money on the network — based not on which technology officer in field wrote the most compelling request, “but on actual live statistics,” he stressed.

His operational crews — that had only ever been reactive — could now act proactively based on real-time data and “before stuff breaks.” Walsh would set targets and key performance indicators for his managers and then “see how they were doing — not based on a score card but actual real statistics, real facts.”

QUOTE OF THE WEEK: All of a sudden you had huge efficiencies coming into the operation which means you gave better end-service to the customer. At the same time you were able to reduce costs of providing the service. This was all happening in the cable sector probably in the years of 2002, 2003. Take that benefit and combine it with BPL and you are making that business case look much rosier.

Tom Walsh, CTO, Smartgrid2

These folks have scaled

Another similarity with cable is the problem utilities face in scaling data networks to cover entire utility footprints. Those are the same problems Walsh tackled with cable-based broadband, he reminded.

It takes “business nerve” to wait for the opportunities to ripen — and then capital to take advantage of the moment when it’s right.

Superior technology will win out, he added. “For us, ‘smart grids’ is nothing new.

“We deployed similar technology on communications networks and quickly realized the operational benefits when scaling is handled correctly.”

While Smartgrid2 works on landing utility contracts, the firm has started deploying MDU networks in the hospitality industry in Ireland .That work helps the firm add hands on experience with BPL plus generate revenue. ( www.mains4.com )

An invitation to Europe

Grids around Europe offer various challenges and “customizing hardware and software for individual markets is crucial,” said Walsh. “A partnership with the right European player can ease that pain.

“We are actively seeking to represent manufacturers over here.” Smartgrid2 partnered with a firm that’s got 180 trained, certified line crew workers “who excel on the physical installation of utility gear.

“Any executive struggling with how to hit Europe should get in touch. “If they are serious and can deliver, we’ll be happy to help them exploit the European opportunities we uncover through our role in the advisory and working groups.”

Smartgrid2 isn’t married to any manufacturer or chipset, Walsh reported, and that lets it “work in an unbiased way to select best-of-breed technologies.

“The smart grids principle is not new. “It’s been [used] in the telecom sector for over four years and has revolutionized both technical and operational management.

“These benefits can now be realized by power utilities, too”

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Asian – Mobile Data and the Wireless Broadband Market

This market report provides an overview of the Mobile Data and Wireless Broadband Market segment across the various markets of Asia. Some 34 Asian countries are covered in the report. It is noted that the amount of information offered is obviously dependent on the relative size of the market in each of the respective countries. The coverage in the report also results in some segment overlap as we see increased convergence in the mobile data and wireless broadband markets. ( http://www.bharatbook.com/detail.asp?id=129867&rt=Asian-Mobile-Data-and-the-Wireless-Broadband-Market.html )

Mobile data services in Asia

With some 1.9 billion Asians using mobile phones by June 2009, the region’s mobile markets offer huge potential for mobile data services.

The growth of wireless Internet in Asia is being driven by competition in the market place and by the advent of 3G and 3.5G services. Market competition has been driving handset prices and airtime tariffs downward, thus opening up mobile services to wider adoption. The rate of adoption of wireless Internet has started to rise with the overall increase in mobile penetration together with networks being progressively upgraded to next generation platforms. While 3G licensing and the ongoing launch of 3G services in Asia has certainly been promoting the growth of wireless data services, 3G has also been providing opportunities for both wireless access and content providers in domestic markets. In South Asia, in particular, more people own a mobile phone than a PC, giving the delivery of mobile data services huge potential there.

Mobile data is not a new phenomenon in Asia. Regional public networks based on Mobitex technology were established in Singapore, Indonesia and South Korea. Another form of mobile data, the DataTAC network, was made available in Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand, with network trials in South Korea, Japan and China. The DataTAC networks established in Asia were more extensive than the corresponding networks in either Europe or the US. An example of widespread adoption of a particular mobile data service has been the SMS capability of GSM and other digital cellular technologies. SMS, which allows the sending and receiving of basic text messages, became very popular throughout Asia, with remarkable growth being experienced in the Philippines and Malaysia, as well as in China.

The business plans of the majority of mobile operators have been built on the assumption that the key to further revenue growth lies in the ability to offer more Value-Added Services (VAS) and, in particular, access to the Internet. A number of technologies are competing for the region’s mobile Internet market. In Singapore, Hong Kong, South Korea, and a number of other countries, in an effort to chase this market, offerings based on the Wireless Application Protocol standard were tried. Apart from South Korea, however, WAP failed to claim any significant share of the market. In Japan, by contrast, NTT DoCoMo launched its i-Mode service and its two rivals –SoftBank and KDDI – launched their own versions of i-Mode with dramatic success, with over 85% of mobile subscribers in Japan logging on from a mobile using one of these platforms. In fact, mobile subscribers (93 million) accessing the Internet surpass fixed line users (90 million). Another system that has supported mobile data, the GPRS, grew out of GSM. Labelled as a 2.5G technology, it has been adopted in a significant number of Asian markets.

Japan’s four main mobile operators, NTT DoCoMo, KDDI (au), Softbank Mobile and eMobile – plan to invest up to ¥1 trillion (US$10 billion) into so-called ‘3.9G’ mobile services, offering end users the prospect of even better and faster options than they have today. Known as 3.9G in Japan, the new networks will use frequencies in the 2,010MHz to 2,025MHz range for Long-term evolution technology. 3.9G performance is roughly comparable with fibre-optic networks and from 2010 a number of domestic carriers intend to utilise their existing 3G infrastructure, on which the providers spent ¥ 5 trillion, to keep 3.9G rollout costs to a minimum.
 

To know more and to buy a copy of your report feel free to visit : http://www.bharatbook.com/detail.asp?id=129867&rt=Asian-Mobile-Data-and-the-Wireless-Broadband-Market.html

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3G mobile communication didn’t happen overnight, but came about as a result of enhancing previous technologies, then combining their best bits for improved efficiency. Below is the historical path from where 3G networks evolved:

0G
It all began with the “pre-cellular” age of mobile radio telephones. Think walkie-talkies, briefcase radios and old car phones, transmitting radio signals on specific frequencies through the airwaves.

1G
Remember the old brick phones from the 80s? They were the first generation of mobile telecommunications. 1G improved on the old radio phones by increasing transmission range (so you could talk to someone far away), working with standard mobile telephone lines (so you could call landlines), and making it possible to account for calls (so mobile communication could be a commercially viable option).

As with 0G, calls were still subject to noise and signal interference (ie. getting someone else’s phone call in the middle of your conversation). Though it doesn’t sound so great by today’s standards, 1G laid the foundations for modern mobile capabilities.

2G
Along came 2G in the early 90’s and with it, digital encryption of the old 1G signal – that is, packaging up your voice into organised pieces before transmitting them. Right away, this meant better sound quality, less noise and no more eavesdropping. This digital system also used less radio power, requiring less hardware and in turn, smaller phones.

Before 2G, there had been over ten different types of mobile standards, ultimately limiting the public’s choice of carrier, choice of handset, and both phone & plan pricing. 2G launched in Australia over the two most efficient standards (GSM and CDMA). Now that carriers and manufacturers had fewer variations to cater for, mobile technology quickly became more accessible and portable.

2G also introduced the ability to send text messages, check emails and surf the web, though in the early days this depended greatly on carriers and handset manufacturers taking the next step in offering this new feature. 2G worked by packaging up an ordinary voice signal into organised pieces before transmitting them, using simple authentication and encryption mechanisms to prevent fraud and eavesdropping.

2.5G and 2.75G
The next step in mobile evolution was 2.5G, upgrading with new technologies GPRS and 1xRTT – faster, cheaper and more efficient ways of emailing and web surfing in a mobile environment.

GPRS was later enhanced to further improve data transmission rates. At this point, it was called EDGE, and marked the 2.75G era. Networks could now support mobile VOIP and video calling, but these features were never adopted by the mainstream.

3G
The 2G era made mobile internet a possibility throughout the world, and the growing demand for multimedia on the move meant that mobile carriers needed a way to deliver bigger chunks of information at higher speeds. Say hello to 3G.

3G didn’t happen overnight, but came about as a result of enhancing 2G technologies, then combining their best bits for improved efficiency. GSM, GPRS, CDMA, 1xEV-DO, UMTS… There are heaps of acronyms in the mix but in short, 3G is the up-to-date collection of mobile standards, all playing nicely together.

Beyond 3G
In the future is the much-prospected 4G, touted to bring a dramatic change to the way we communicate. It’s said to provide mobile voice, data and streaming capabilities using IP technology.

This means that today’s traditional high-speed Internet will not only be at home and work, but can extend to the palm of your hand. That comes with all the trimmings too – VOIP, streaming video, online chat, mobile gaming and even running a web server on your mobile phone. Internet everywhere – literally.

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Social networking websites have become part and parcel of our daily lives. And with a multitude of different services available to us, the choice is endless.

Combined with an increase in cheap broadband packages now available to us, more of us are now using the internet to keep in keeping in contact with friends and family, finding employment and just generally sharing silly pictures.

For others it can become an obsession – with some worrying about who could possibly be leaving comments on their message boards, becoming conscious about e-mails and updating their status every five minutes or so.

And as broadband connections are becoming more widely available to us, more of us are making use of these sites. But studies have shown that, whilst our attitudes towards social networking may have changed, our awareness of the risks of putting our personal details online still remains one of the grey areas of such services.

A recent study carried out by OFCOM has helped to shed some light on the trends of social networking. The results showed that it was mostly young people who made use of the services available on social networking sites, with an estimated 49% of children aged 8-17 having a profile online.

And with broadband services becoming more widespread, there are calls for greater awareness and promotion of online safety for surfers of all ages.

Coupled with the recent Byron Report, which focused on the influence of internet content and computer games on young people, parents are now being advised to keep an eye on information their children may be posting online.

And with more of us now putting personal details on our profiles, it could be seen as an easy target for cyber criminals and marketing associations.

There is now pressure on the world of social networking to ensure that children are protected, calling for a use of age verification, better profile security for young people and access to ‘panic buttons’ which can be used to report suspicious activity while surfing the internet.

As levels of cyber crime and identify theft are on the increase, there is a growing call to take steps to protect our personal details online, be it through social networking or spam e-mails.

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