Looking at white papers, data sheets and articles about narrowband PLC, I get confused about the data rates mentioned in materials. It seems rather challenging to compare various technologies. With this blog I would like to bring some light into this topic.

Many utilities in the Europe Middle East & Africa  region have already implemented smart metering and faced the challenges of the rollout. Project management requires specific expertise when the installation, operation and maintenance of a communication network come into the picture.

Today, the first movers are already planning and preparing for a second wave of rollouts and migrating from the first generation PLC, like FSK (frequency shift keying) and PSK (phase shift keying) based PLC to modern OFDM (orthogonal frequency division multiplex) technology. Now the main question is how this can be done while keeping the internal processes ongoing and protecting the investment. This article will provide insight into a migration of this type, enabled by G3 PLC.

The rollout of smart metering with G3 technology continues. After the successful technology field tests during the first half of 2015, there are currently several customer pilot projects ongoing around EMEA, for example in Austria, Latvia and Slovenia.

At the beginning of 2015, we started the first field tests on G3 PLC technology. The results described below are based on two test installations that ran for several months in our customers’ networks. Following on from these tests, we started a customer pilot, which has so far proven our findings.