Martins Store Substation BPL Update : 3.5.09

Nelson County, Virginia
This is the latest e-mail blast sent out from IBEC Thursday afternoon.

From: “IBEC Customer Service”
Date: March 5, 2009 5:23:29 PM EST
To: “info”
Subject: Martins Store Broadband over Powerline Update March 05, 2009

Martins Store Substation BPL Update

March 05, 2009

The update this week will be brief, as IBEC lost its BPL deployment crews for the week due to “snow recovery” duty elsewhere. They should be back in place next Monday, continuing to troubleshoot deployment issues and deploy new BPL backbone.

While the deployment crews were away this week, IBEC Field Technicians continued to identify noise sources and other trouble spots that could impact your broadband performance. The “off week” in deployment allowed the IBEC team to catch up in troubleshooting, so there will be a full slate of work ready when the crews return next week. At this point, all customers with BPL backbone service in place and thus ready to be connected should have been contacted by IBEC to begin that process. IBEC expects this to pick up again quickly as the crews begin deploying again next week.

One point that may need clarification is the process by which service becomes available to customers. It may be confusing to see a BPL Regenerator or Customer Access Unit (CAU) hanging on a pole nearby and yet not have service available to consumers there. Generally, the backbone of Regenerators and CAUs are deployed first, and then portions of the BPL network are connected and tested before customers are contacted by IBEC Customer Service to plug in their modem and begin BPL service. The segmentation of the network is dependent on the way the power distribution network is divided, and that is often not clear from visual inspection. As a result, one set of customers may be brought online, while a segment a block away, fed by a different electrical distribution circuit, may not yet by ready. Since Regenerators and CAUs may already be deployed in both areas, it is easy to be confused. Rest assured, as soon as an area becomes eligible for new customers, IBEC Customer Service will be in contact to begin the process!

If you are contacted by IBEC by telephone, please get back in touch with us, so that we can activate your modem and ensure that you have an optimized configuration. We have had some good reports from people whose service has been activated in the past few weeks and hope that others will send their comments to service@ibec.net.

Thanks again for your patience,
IBEC Customer Service