OPERA 2 Second Period Review: Objectives for the period fully achieved

It is a pleasure to inform about the outcome of the OPERA 2 Second Period Review. This event took place last Monday 2nd of June in Linz (Austria) and it was kindly hosted by the Opera partner Linz AG. The review was attended by our EC Project Officer Mr. Jorge Carvalho plus three external reviewers.
The EC has rated the project during this Period as a "Good to Excellent Project" which is the best possible rating. The project has achieved most of its objectives and technical goals for the period and has even exceeded expectations.
Now the third and last period for the projects begins, which will end on December 2008.

Memorandum of Understanding signed between OPERA and Samba project

The parties of this agreement intent to collaborate among each other on relevant topics of common interest for both projects, taking into consideration that PLC technology is the core objective of Opera project and is used by Samba project in order to develop the technical solution.

Visit Samba project or read an Article about SAMBA Project.

OPERA phase 2 Celebrated its second General Assembly last 22nd of January

The second General Assembly of the project was celebrated the last 22nd of January in Mannheim (Germany) with the participation of representatives of all the consortium partners, gathering around 50 people in total.
At this moment, in which OPERA phase 2 reaches its first half, the General Assembly constituted the perfect opportunity to gather all the consortium members in a face to face meeting and make an overview of the achievements and progress towards its objectives that OPERA 2 is performing.

Full story: download .PDF version (48 KB).

Broadband in Latin America

Article whose aim is to examine, in broad outline, the way forward for parts of the broadband access market in Latin America.
Full story: download .doc (700 KB)

Opera 2 First Period Review: EXCELLENT

OPERA2 First Period Review took place last Tuesday 17th May in Lisbon attended by EC Project Officer Mr. Jorge Carvalho plus four external reviewers.
The EC has rated Opera 2 for this Period as "Good to Excellent Project" which is the highest possible score. The results expected for this three-month period have been achieved and in some cases exceeded, according to the EC.

Full story

Opera phase 2 Kickoff Meeting

Opera Project phase 2 initiated its labour on past January, coordinated by Iberdrola
The EU - sponsored Powerline project (EC/IST FP6 Project No 026920), OPERA – Open PLC European Research Alliance, which is part of the larger broadband project Broadband for All, started work on January 1, 2004 and has recently started its second phase.
The kickoff meeting of phase 2 was celebrated on January 9-10, 2007 in Madrid with the objective of to continue obtaining further enhancements on PLC technology as a natural evolution of phase 1.

• deployments in rural areas to reduce the digital divide
• deployments in multi-dwelling units, in combination with fiber-to-the-building, to offer high-end triple-play services
• deployments in high density areas, sharing a backbone connection between several multi-dwelling units, to offer low-cost double-play services
• deployments to support utility-oriented services

How does it work?
The power line is transformed into a communication network through the superposition of a low energy information signal to the power wave. In order to ensure a suited coexistence and separation between the two systems, the frequency range used PLC (1 to 30 MHz) is very far from the one used for the power wave (50 Hz in Europe).