DirecTV Moving Ahead with Broadband-Over-Powerline in Dallas

Just as we were wondering how DirecTV’s Broadband-Over-Powerline (BPL) partnership with Current Group is coming along after it made its initial announcement in August 2007, our Director of Broadband - Michael Cai bumped into DirecTV’s moving BPL advertisement on the back of a truck on his way back home last week. They surely are making some progress. Dallas Morning News reported that Current has quietly made 130,000 homes in East Dallas ready to receive this service, while DirecTV has begun marketing to half the ready households. The article did not mention how many subscribers it has obtained though. Although the 130,000 number is only 7% of the two companies’ original 2 million households plan, it represents a good start nonetheless.

In our newly published U.S. Broadband Market Update 2007 report, we estimated there were only about 10,000 households in the U.S. using BPL as their broadband access technology at YE 2007, or 0.02% market share. Going forward, BPL will remain a complementary technology overshadowed by dominant cable Modem, DSL and the fast growing fiber deployment. Rural and inner-city urban dwellings, however, will be BPL’s best shot. For one thing, in underserved rural areas, existing power lines can help alleviate the capital expenditure of deploying broadband lines. In urban areas, BPL is considered a favorable option for MDU (Multiple-Dwelling Units) deployment because population is more concentrated and the couplers used for in-building applications are smaller than those used in outdoor medium-voltage applications, saving space, cost, and installation time for the service providers. Thus, BPL will grow in importance in the broadband landscape. We forecasted there will be 400,000 BPL households in 2012, representing 0.5% of total broadband households in the U.S.