Although not totally unexpected, I received a rather depressing letter in the mail last week. The letter was from my Internet Service Provider, IBEC. IBEC is a large provider of broadband over power line. To summarize the letter, due to insurmountable financial difficulties, they are ceasing operations. Headquartered in Alabama, IBEC’s largest service area was decimated by tornados in April of 2011. I’m not sure why, but apparently their insurance did not cover the losses and they were unable to secure federal funding for rural broadband development. As a result, our internet service will cease on January 31st. This is a very big deal for me as I have no other real choices for broadband internet access.
Never heard of broadband over power line? You’re not alone. Basically it is exactly what it sounds like, broadband services provided via the power line. To quote from the BPL wiki, “Power line communications systems operate by impressing a modulated carrier signal on the wiring system.” From a consumer prospective, the BPL modem is simply a grey box with some lights on the front and an RJ-45 port on the bottom that plugs into an electrical socket. One thing I found out pretty quick was that the modem was sensitive as to where it was plugged in. Various chargers and appliances, if plugged into the same circuit, seemed to introduce enough interference on the line to affect the quality of the connection. When I built my house, I ran a few dedicated circuits to the area where my servers and network equipment are plugged in. This configuration worked out quite well. The last noticeable piece is something that you would see if you take a drive in my area, little grey boxes on the power poles. These boxes are repeaters that will pick up the broadband signal, refresh the signal, and induce it back onto the line. It seems like these devices are on every 3 or four poles.
When the service became available, only a basic 512 Kbps plan was offered. As soon as the “ultra” level of service became available, I signed up for it. For $49.99, I received 1 Mbps up/down. There were periods of time when the system seemed flawless. The connection was solid and the speeds were consistent. Unfortunately, the service wasn’t without its problems. There were times when the system was completely down, and speeds were no better than dial-up. At one time in March of last year, I had an outage that lasted for several days. During this prolonged outage, I went so far as to email IBEC’s CEO, Scott Lee. I got a fantastic response from him. It was personal, apologetic, and above else, it got the problem resolved. Overall the customer service was great. There was one guy in particular that really knew what he was doing. Every call I made to tech support, I tried to talk to him. It was a guarantee that if he knew we had a problem in our area, he would make sure it was fixed.
I feel like I am writing a freaking eulogy. In a way, I guess I am. It was a year ago today that my service was turned up. Here I am a year to the day later, the service is being terminated, and there is nothing that I can do about it. I’m not sure what went wrong here. Did someone not read the insurance policy carefully enough to make sure it covered catastrophic equipment loss? Why was IBEC not able to secure federal stimulus funding specifically targeted for rural broadband deployment? This was truly a “last-mile” solution that used existing infrastructure to deliver high speed data services. It angers me to no end to see this company fail. This technology was not yet mature, but it sure as hell was the best solution available to us. To the bureaucrats who droll on about rural communities being broadband deprived. The technology was here, it was deployed, and it was working. You did not give this technology your support, now it is dead. Given time, I believe this technology would have matured.
To my electric cooperative. Thank you. Thank you for putting forth the effort to deploy this technology. This service was greatly appreciated.