“Call it a dark horse in the race to bring Internet connections to America’s homes. The electric utility industry wants to bring us Internet connections as well,” Dean Takahashi reports for The Mercury News. “Consumers already have cable TV and phone companies vying to sign them up for high-speed Internet service. The power companies would be new contenders in this race.”
“It may sound crazy that the people who have brought us outages and brownouts are promising round-the-clock high-speed Internet access. But after years of incubation, industry observers say it’s ready to happen. Trials have begun, and big rollouts are expected in 2006,” Takahashi reports. “The service, called BPL for broadband over power lines, could be cheaper and faster than DSL service over phone lines or cable-TV that now supply Internet connections to most U.S. households.”
Full article here.