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BPL - Broadband over Power Line: Coming to an Outlet Near You
by Ronald on October 16, 2004 02:00PM (EDT)
In a ruling issued on Thursday, the FCC has given carte blanche for operators to provide broadband over power lines in order to "increase competition and promote broadband service to all Americans". The major goal of this initiative is to increase the availability of broadband to wider areas of the country because power lines reach virtually every home and community. Moreover, in areas where broadband access is already available, BPL can greatly enhance competition by providing consumers with another broadband alternative. The FCC also mentions the following BPL intangibles:
“self-healing” network capabilities
improved security from physical and cyber threats
facilitating use of distributed generation
customer and utility control of appliances and equipment energy use
improved load management and electric grid utilization
applications, including automated meter reading, extension of supervisory control and data acquisition functions to the end user level, outage detection, and equipment performance monitoring
As discussed in a previous post here, it is certainly conceivable to see in the not so distant future a few utilities acting as landlords, and leasing their feeder networks as a backhaul access to wireless broadband service providers.
But in the meantime, ISPs are already signing up deals with electric utility companies. For instance, EarthLink will start offering Internet connections over Consolidated Edison's power lines in Manhattan. Con Ed is teaming up with Ambient Corporation on that particular deal, and already began signing apartment building landlords. Eventually, the range of service offerings can be quite ample, including not only Internet access, but also VoIP and other value added services, including: diagnostics, managing residential power load, monitoring electricity consumption, etc.
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