Idaho Telecommunications Company Getting Out of BPL
NEWINGTON, CT, Jan 27, 2006--IDACOMM, a telecommunications subsidiary of Boise, Idaho-based IDACORP, has bailed out of BPL. While the company has not been providing BPL service on a commercial basis, it has been cooperating with IDACORP subsidiary Idaho Power in a Boise test, and it had partnered with IBM and electric utility CenterPoint Energy to help design, install and operate a BPL pilot project in the Houston, Texas, area. IDACORP Chief Executive Jan Packwood says the company has "fully explored the BPL opportunity" and believes that it has "significant long-term potential," but utilities have not been flocking to adopt the technology.
"Commercialization . . . will require widespread adoption by electric utilities, and we do not see signs of that happening anytime soon," Packwood said in a January 25 announcement. "We have good assets in three of the West's fastest-growing cities, and we believe that concentrating on our home markets and core products of voice and fiber optic transport will achieve profitability much more quickly."
ARRL CEO David Sumner, K1ZZ, says he views IDACOMM's abandonment of BPL as just part of a larger pattern. "BPL proponents said that 2005 was going to be a big year for the technology," he commented, "but in fact there were exactly as many commercial deployments at the end of the year as at the beginning--two--and the pilot projects are disappearing as companies cut their losses."
IDACOMM says it started exploring BPL because it was a "natural interest" for a telecommunications company already offering broadband and affiliated with an electric utility. The company was said to be consulting with several other utilities across the US on how to implement the BPL, but it planned to focus its initial commercial forays in states like California and Texas that have statutes promoting BPL.
The company has been working with BPL equipment manufacturers Ambient, Amperion and Mitsubishi. All supply DS2-based hardware which, in some BPL field trials, has proven difficult to effectively "notch" frequency ranges--such as the Amateur Radio bands--to avoid interference.
IDACOMM had touted itself as "the premiere company to offer a comprehensive, turnkey BPL solution stretching across the spectrum of the BPL value chain." The company now says it "will focus exclusively on building its existing competitive local exchange carrier business in Boise, Las Vegas and Reno, and phasing out the portion of the business previously dedicated to exploring the potential of using power lines as the conduit for high speed Internet service, commonly referred to as BPL," although it will fulfill any outstanding BPL-related contracts with other companies.
As a result of the change in corporate strategy, IDACOMM will take "a non-cash charge related to impairment of goodwill of approximately $10 million" in the fourth quarter of 2005, the company said. That's approximately 24 cents per share at IDACORP. The company has declined to disclose how much money it had invested in BPL.
It's not known if there's any connection between IDACOMM's BPL pullout and the recent departure of its CEO Chris Britton. IDACOMM has said Britton "left the company to pursue other interests."
Page last modified: 02:12 PM, 27 Jan 2006 ET
Page author: awextra@arrl.org
Copyright © 2006, American Radio Relay League, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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