By Sam Kennedy
Of The Morning Call

The use of electrical wires for high-speed Internet access at a downtown
Allentown hotel is a milestone not only for PPL Corp., but also for the
futuristic technology the Allentown company is pioneering.

The Crowne Plaza hotel on Hamilton Street this week unveiled its new
broadband over power lines service, or BPL.

The hotel is the utility's first paying commercial customer of BPL, and
perhaps the biggest commercial customer of the technology nationwide. All
225 guest rooms and public areas in the building have been equipped.

It's a business model PPL will soon apply to other hotels and apartment
complexes throughout the Lehigh Valley, according to a spokesman for the
company.

Such plans signal PPL's growing confidence in a potentially revolutionary
technology. BPL - or power line communications, as it's also called - holds
the promise of becoming the next major Internet pipeline into homes and
businesses, and of fulfilling predictions of widespread adoption of
high-speed Internet service.

It could bring fast Internet service for the first time to many computer
users, particularly those in rural locations who now cannot take full
advantage of the Web's offerings. At the same time, it could spur
competition among existing Internet service providers, such as cable and
telephone companies, leading to cheaper prices and better service for all
consumers.

The technology has come a long way in a relatively short time, according to
experts. Steve Hadden, vice president of electric utility consulting firm
Plexis Research, located outside of Boston, described the progress in recent
years as ''mind-boggling.''

Its long-term viability, however, is still an issue. ''Can you make it work
for a low enough cost for the prices you can charge in the market today?''
asked Robert Olsen, a professor of electrical engineering at Washington
State University in Pullman, Wash. ''That's the real question.''

About a dozen electric utilities nationwide are experimenting with BPL. One,
Cinergy Corp. of Cincinnati, Ohio, plans on bringing the service to 55,000
customers by the end of the year. PPL, with five trials in the Lehigh Valley
so far, is somewhere at the head of the pack.

Yet the company, wary of tipping its hand to competitors and reluctant to
draw attention to an unproven technology, is hush-hush on the subject. It
hardly publicizes its efforts, offers no indication of when to expect a
full-scale, region-wide rollout and never discloses financial details.

Such reticence is well-advised, according to analysts. ''We've been down
this road so many times,'' David Schanzer, an analyst with Janney Montgomery
Scott in Philadelphia, said, referring to the hype that has so often
preceded unprofitable technologies. ''They have learned the hard way.''

BPL does face intense opposition, particularly from the American Radio Relay
League, which represents 163,000 shortwave radio, or ham radio, operators.
The technology could disrupt shortwave radio as well as the high-frequency
transmissions used for national security, emergency response and an array of
other applications, according to BPL detractors.

The Federal Communication Commission, which regulates the airwaves, has
suggested such problems can be resolved by technical solutions - a position
shared by PPL.

BPL compares well to the alternatives, both in terms of performance and
price. It costs about the same as the typical cable modem and DSL from
telephone companies, and is about as fast.

PPL's first two trials started about a year ago in Whitehall Township and
Emmaus, where the service was introduced to customers free while the company
worked out kinks in the technology.

A third, so-called marketing trial, where the service was offered to
residential customers for a base price of about $40 a month, began in
Hanover Township, Northampton County, last fall. Two more, in Upper Macungie
Township and Bethlehem, followed this spring.

Along the way, PPL has experimented with various methods. In earlier
efforts, such as in Emmaus, customers connected to the Internet by plugging
into a power outlet; the electrical cord doubled as a conduit for the
Internet signal. In the latest trials, the Internet signal comes from an
antenna attached to a medium-voltage power line outside, which is capable of
serving multiple homes in the vicinity.

At the Crowne Plaza, a guest connects the computer to the Internet through a
modem that is plugged into a power outlet. Data is transmitted over the
hotel's electrical wiring to and from an antenna on the roof, which
communicates directly with PPL's own fiber optic network.



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