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The power company Sydkraft will be the first in Sweden to offer broadband services via the mains electricity network. At the end of September, the first customers will be connected in the south of Sweden.
Sydkraft has tested broadband technology via the electric grid in 24 Swedish households for several years. Now, the company is ready to commercialise the service, although still in a geographically limited area. According to Sydkraft's Per Wigren, the service will be offered in some areas around Malmö, in the south of Sweden.

Equipment will come from Swiss Ascom, and not from Swedish Ilevo, a company which Sydkraft recently invested in. Ilevo is behind schedule and its equipment is not yet commercially available. The company aims to offer equipment for 2Mbit/s in about a year's time. Ascom on the other hand has already supplied equipment to the German power distributor RWE, which last spring launched the first commercial Power Line Communications (PLC) service.

The Swedish distributor is expecting some 3 000 subscribers before the end of the year. The monthtly charge will be in the region of SEK300, which is comparable to charges for telecom operator Telia's ADSL service.

According to Per Wigren, transmission speed will generally be in the region of 2.3-2.5Mbit/s in both directions, but can vary between just over 1Mbit/s to 4.5Mbit/s depending on network conditions. This capacity will be shared by subscribers connected to the same transformer station. However, Sydkraft is confident that this will be enough to satisfy subscribers.

"Not everyone is doing everything at the same time. When 20 customers shared 1Mbit they all felt like they had access to around 0.5Mbit each," says Per Wigren.


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