UK firm slashes cost of data-over-mains

A UK-designed chip costing less than $5 (£2.40) will allow a device to use mains wiring as a data link, the developer says.

The Poem chip, from Swindon-based Siconnect, connects at only 14Mbits/sec compared with claims of up to 200Mbits/sec for some rival products.

But Robert Stead, vice-president of marketing, says the company cites only real data throughput. “If we were to use the same ratings as our competitors we would be talking around 90Mbits/sec.”

Stead said speeds of future Poem chips will be higher but that the current chips were well up to transmitting a standard video stream.

PCW tests have indeed found real speeds of some data-over-mains products to be a fraction of their rated speeds. At least three other technologies are competing in this arena, including one from Panasonic that the manufacturer has planned to implement directly in consumer-electronics devices. The advantage is that a TV, say, can be networked simply by plugging it in.

This is the market being targeted by Siconnect, though its links are not restricted to Ethernet: it can, for instance, implement a USB link of the mains.

But Stead says its modulation system is very different from rivals and is better able to cope with interference from domestic appliances and to guarantee bandwidth for data streams. It has a mechanism to manage quality of service and prioritise streaming.

Poems are also different in that they form a mesh network – if data is blocked along one path, it can pass along another.

There are fears that widespread use of data-over-mains in cities could cause interference problems, particularly with aircraft communications. All the competing technologies can “notch out” frequencies used by radio amateurs, which have complained that they could be squeezed out of the airwaves.

But Stead claimed the power levels are too low to cause a problem. “We cause less radio pollution than [very high bit rate] DSL,” he said at the IPTV Forum in London.

The chief technologist at Siconnect, Peter Strong, designed the Apricot PC, which is claimed to be the world’s first single-board personal computer.

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