MANILA, Philippines?Manila Electric Co. will soon test in Malabon City a broadband-over-powerline (BPL) project, which if proven commercially viable, is a potential new cash cow for the country?s biggest power retailer.

Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. chair Manuel V. Pangilinan on Tuesday told shareholders of subsidiary Pilipino Telephone Corp. that BPL, cited as among the many synergies between Meralco and the telecom giant, would begin soon.

He added that they were proven right in investing in Meralco by the fact that share prices had gone up sharply since the group agreed to buy a 20-percent stake in the company from the Lopezes at P90 a share. As of Tuesday, Meralco closed at P143 a share.

Piltel is the vehicle used by the PLDT group to take up the 20-percent stake sold by the Lopezes in Meralco. On top of this, the PLDT Beneficial Trust Fund owns another 10.2 percent, which it will soon sell to affiliate Metro Pacific Investments Corp.

The BPL project?which can potentially provide cheaper high-speed Internet to millions of households?was believed to be the PLDT group?s biggest motivation in buying into Meralco especially because another powerful voting block that had come in much earlier, San Miguel Corp., was also keen on entering the highly competitive telecom business.

?But they won?t do that until after August. They would like to test for two or three months,? Pangilinan said.

In an interview with the Inquirer, Martin Lopez, vice president and chief information officer of Meralco, said the company expected to ?start some kind of a rollout of pilot equipment in August? for the BPL project.

Lopez said the BPL project was still in the ?very early stages? although Meralco, for its part, has already conducted an inspection of the power facilities in Malabon.

He disclosed that the BPL project was part of an even bigger project dubbed ?Smart Grid.?

?BPL is a just a means, a subset of the whole project,? he said.

He explained that the smart grid project would allow utilities like Meralco to be able to remotely monitor all the facilities on the field and check transformers and transmission lines with the use of power lines.