Ross Sheil, Staff Reporter

Lennan Matthews using an Internet calling service at his Beverly Hills, St. Andrew home. - Photo by Ross Sheil

Back in 1986, having retired as an executive, manufac-turing cosmetics in Jamaica for the Sara Lee Corporation, Mr. Matthews faced the usual retiree dilemma, 'What to do?'.

He bought a computer, two years later attended a course, and began developing a familiarity with the technology that puts younger generations to shame.

"It's a new way of life; It keeps me going! With the Internet you don't have to be alone, you can be all over just by sitting comfortably in your apartment," said Mr. Matthews, who estimates he spends up to six hours a day online at his Beverly Hills, St. Andrew, apartment.

Most of his time is spent either reading from different news websites or keeping in touch with friends and relatives abroad via online calling services.

New connection

But, uniquely, the broadband Internet is not delivered by wireless or copper or fibre cables. Instead, he and a handful of others at their eight-apartment complex in Beverly Hills go online via conventional electricity sockets, through what is called 'broadband over powerlines' (BPL).

Mr. Matthews had the good fortune to be the neighbour of Dr. Damith Wickramanayake, originally from Sri Lanka, who is an engineering lecturer at the University of Technology (UTech).

Including Dr. Wickramanayake's own, he has connected four apartments by BPL. Using a Cable & Wireless 3Mb/s (megabytes per second) Internet connection, Dr. Wickramanayakes redistributes bandwidth to his neighbours by transmitting it from a socket in his bedroom which is picked up by adapters (imported from the United States at a cost of $5,000) plugged in at their apartments.

This creates what is called a local area network (LAN) and can easily be replicated at other complexes and, according to Dr. Wickramanayakes, with a similar 3Mb/s connection there is sufficient bandwith to form a LAN of up to 20 apartments.

The only limit is that the BPL LAN cannot extend further than one building.

Convenient

"We first demonstrated it at UTech at Research and Technology Day a year ago when it took just 10 minutes to feed Internet to the whole auditorium," he said. "It is con-venient because you don't need wires and everyone has an electricity socket."

He believes that the Jamaica Public Service Company could use BPL to read meters by connecting the adapters to meters. This, he said, would make significant savings for the company by allowing it to disconnect and reconnect customers remotely.

BPL is already being used by hotels in Asia as a cheap alternative to provide Internet access, he said.

ross.sheil@gleanerjm.com