BPL Still Going Nowhere

I have been covering Internet over power lines for 10 years.

It has always been a pipe dream, and always will be.

The reason is that, when you load a power line with Internet-speed traffic, you create enormous interference with licensed radio frequencies. Especially ham radio frequencies. So any time a BPL provider gets close enough to development for an announcement, the hams rise up en masse and push them down again. (BPL stands for Broadband over PowerLine.)

So it will be in Dallas, I predict, where Current claims to have a re-sale deal with DirecTv which (they claim) will give the latter a "triple play" offering of telephony, Internet and TV, competing with cable and the Bells. TXU won the right to do this through a contract with TXU. 

The only thing which might give advocates hope here is that Current claims it is delivering a "Smart Grid" to utilities which lets them manage power loads more sensibly and read your meter remotely. Today, however, that only means giving utilities the ability to see how much power their low voltage lines are actually delivering. I don't think this puts them in a position to buy power from homeowners who have solar panels and windmills (although I would love to be wrong on that).

As a first step toward becoming more efficient and starting to engage in The War Against Oil, Current Group has some good ideas. As a solution to the broadband duopoly, it's just not happening.