🔌 Throwback to Our PLC Communication Breakthroughs (2012–2017)
Between 2012 and 2017, ModemTec laid the technological foundations for its leadership in Power Line Communication (PLC) — years that were less about buzzwords and more about building reliable, field-tested solutions.
These early years saw:
- Development of our first PLC modems capable of robust data transmission over MV and LV power lines
- Real-world testing across industrial and energy distribution networks, fine-tuning signal integrity and noise immunity
- The birth of our MT49 platform, with practical applications in remote metering, diagnostics, and control over power infrastructure
By 2017, we weren’t just testing in labs — we were deploying across critical infrastructure and proving that communication over power lines wasn’t just viable — it was dependable.
Our blog documents this journey — from low-level signal handling to network-scale coordination.
👉 Dive into the archive and see how ModemTec built its PLC foundation, one connection at a time: https://modemtec.com/blog
List of our breakthrough articles:
- Interoperability? OFDM? Forget about it (for now): In comparison with the situation in the recent past, today’s power engineering faces new situations. In the mature world, power is promoted as one of the basic human needs. Normal societal behaviour cannot be ensured without electricity. The politics of CO2 emissions reductions and significant financial support for renewable resources is leading to their massive deployment, with all the associated impacts. [2013-01]
- Metering Communication: Don’t bet on the wrong standards: Examines the role of current interoperability standards and calls into question whether these are truly interoperable. Examining PRIME, G3-PLC, and OSGP and determining whether the interoperability is truly across the entire system, or just within a few reference layers of the whole communication model. [2014-02]
- Power Line Communication – The Weakest Link? : There is no doubt that power lines are part of critical infrastructure. Power engineering is now at its most dramatic development phase. Unfortunately, progress in technologies and political decisions tend to complicate development. [2014-05]
- Are Wireless Links killing Power Line Communication? : IoT, sub-GHz, LPWAN… Everyone who is aware of contemporary trends in telecommunication technology and its evolution could not have missed these ‘magical’ abbreviations. All prominent manufacturers of microcontrollers, sensors, communication chipsets and their components offer some ‘IoT ready’ components. At first, it may seem the bells have tolled for PLC (power line communication) and that the future belongs to wireless connection. But is that really the case? [2016-03]
- Communication channels – source of smart system economic benefits: There are a few imperfections in contemporary smart systems currently being used in power engineering. The slowdown or halt in the installation of new smart systems (primarily smart electrometers) force us to ponder and analyse this situation. [2016-06]
- Narrowband PLC Communication – an Excellent Diagnostic Tool: Within the smart grid, PLC communication over high voltage (230 V) belongs to the dominant transmission channels. The area of the operated territory is often up to 1km2 , and there are plenty of factors with negative influences on PLC signal strength, including topology changes, parasitic impedance from customer behaviour, or significantly high disturbance because customers don’t respect valid EMC standards. Fortunately, the small number of high voltage lines means that there is no problem with own line impedance at lower transmission frequencies. [2017-04]