Internet Access over Powerlines
If you want fast access to the Internet from home, right now the two major choices are through your cable system or your phone system using DSL (for Digital Subscriber Line). Both cost in the $40 a month range in our area, and both have a variety of advantages and disadvantages that pretty much balance out. In rural areas, often the only choice is digital satellite, which is a bit more expensive still.
Soon, however, we may have the possibility of third option called Broadband over Power Lines , or BPL. Using new technology, your Internet signals would be sent through the same lines that your house uses for electricity. The speeds are quite high as well, reaching as high as 3 million bits per second. Another important aspect is that this speed is both ways, allowing you to send data at that high speed as well as download. The competing options all have much slower upload speeds than download speeds.
BPL has been tested in several cities, and is being rolled out to potentially hundreds of thousands of customers over the next six to nine months. The exciting aspect of this is that there is no new wiring, cabling, or other new infrastructure to set up - once the system is set up at the power company, you just plug a router into an electrical outlet, and you’re good to go. This is a huge advantage for rural customers, where the cost of stringing cable or installing new phone line technology is too expensive.
This might be one of those “disruptive technologies” if it works out. That’s a big if, though. We’ll know in a year or two if this was a breakthrough, or one of those “whatever happened to flying cars?” kind of things.
Check out the Slate article on this at slate.msn.com/id/2097131/.