PLDT, Meralco consider new equipment supplier for BPL project

Philippine Long Distance Telephone Company (PLDT) and Filipino power utility Manila Electric Company (Meralco) are considering options to source a new equipment supplier for their joint broadband over power lines (BPL) project, Business Mirror reports citing Meralco’s Alfredo Panlilio as saying. The power firm’s VP for customer retail services says a ‘well-known vendor supplier from Germany’ has expressed interest in the plan and offered its services to conduct tests of BPL for the pair. ‘I have yet to get in touch with them but we are considering it because the current technology used to run a test on the project is not good,’ Panlilio said. Meralco has been offering BPL on a pilot/test basis since August 2009 in Malabon. Having originally envisaged a three-month trial and a subsequent wide-scale deployment, the plan has been hampered by interference problems and a full commercial launch has been put on hold until the matter is addressed. ‘The vendor helping us with the pilot test is an American company and it told us that the technology it uses is also being deployed in Russia. So far, however, we are not pleased with the results. The service level is not good. The speed is so slow that probably the bandwidth can’t take the interference,’ the official revealed.