By ElectraStar's contract with our Prague utility partner, PRE, ElectraStar has the right to install our BPL network on any part of PRE's low-voltage grid covering the entire city of Prague. This enables ElectraStar to deploy broadband connectivity to literally any point along every street within the Prague territory.

ElectraStar's unique capability to deliver universal broadband connectivity brings major business potential to deploy SmartCity systems on ElectraStar's BPL platform. There are many revenue gen- erating SmartCity applications for ElectraStar's network, including:

• CCTV urban security surveilance
• City-center traffic access tolling
• Public WiFi hotspots

• Traffic-flow monitoring & control
• Environmental monitoring
• Multimedia kiosks for public information & advertising

SmartCity systems require stable always-on broadband capacity for large real-time data flows. Moreover, Smart-City systems require broadband links at thousands of points in the city, many of which are inaccessible by ADSL or fiber-optic networks, while wireless networks (eg. UMTS or 802.11g) lack the requisite bandwidth capacity, signal stability or security.

ElectraStar's BPL network is the most cost-effective way to deliver synchronous upstream bandwidth. Most other broadband access technologies, like ADSL, do not have the multi-Mbps upstream speeds required for SmartCity systems, because their technology limits upstream speed to just a fraction of download speed. Although fiber-optic networks do have ample upstream bandwidth, it is unfeasible, economically and practically, to dig fiber ducts to so many points in the city.

ElectraStar's BPL network is the ideal SmartCity solution, because only ElectraStar delivers inexpensive high-bandwidth capacity and "anywhere-needed, when-needed" connectivity to integrate thousands of SmartCity sensors, modems, cameras, servers and transmitters on a single TCP/IP-WAN platform.

ElectraStar's SmartCity Solution for Prague

ElectraStar is presently deploying its BPL network to interconnect Prague's network of traffic-lights and street-lights, comprising 1,900 controller boxes and about 123,000 traffic and street lights (usually on poles).

This network of controller-boxes and light-poles represents 125,000 points-of-presence (PoP's) omnipresent throughout Prague. Because each of these PoP's is connected to the power grid of our utility partner PRE, ElectraStar can readily deploy BPL connectivity to these PoP's to achieve blanket broadband coverage of the city.

As explained above, ElectraStar's BPL network is the only technically and economically feasible way to supply so many PoP's with high-capacity broadband on the powerlines connecting all of these PoP's.

Integrating these PoP's into a single TCP-IP broadband network with universal city coverage will create the ultimate SmartCity platform. This opens up major business opportunities for SmartCity projects, like those listed above with public sector and private sector partners.

ElectraStar has already installed our SmartCity solution for Prague in a pilot project using our BPL network and data management technology installed in light controller-boxes to relay real-time data and signalling for remote control of all traffic & street lights, network status surveillance, outage detection, traffic-light synchronization, street-light automation and compilation of performance statistics. This pilot project is presently in operation.

ElectraStar SmartCity System on TCP/IP-over-BPL WAN