AT&T: Plug into power sockets for high-speed Net
Last modified: July 14, 2004, 11:55 AM PDT
By Ben Charny
Staff Writer, CNET News.com


AT&T and Pacific Gas and Electric demonstrated Wednesday how broadband
can be sent over power lines, an emerging alternative to cable and DSL
for delivering high-speed Internet access.

As part of the demonstration, at AT&T Labs in Menlo Park, Calif., the
companies created a connection operating at 500 kilobits per second to 3
megabits per second over a power grid. AT&T intends to send voice calls
over that link using voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technology,
among other applications, the company said.

Because electricity travels at a lower frequency than Internet signals,
the two can coexist on the same line without interference. Power lines
are also an attractive broadband delivery system because they are
already in place and reach more homes than either cable systems or
telephone lines.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Michael Powell attended the
demonstration. He has said that broadband over power line (BPL)
technology makes it "theoretically possible to reach every power outlet
in America with a broadband connection." The FCC is under pressure to
substantially increase the number of U.S. homes that have broadband,
which now stands at about 29.2 million.

AT&T and other local phone companies support the technology because it
doesn't rely on the local phone networks owned by regional Bell
operating companies BellSouth, Verizon Communications, Qwest
Communications International and SBC Communications.

Phone competition rules that set cheap rates elapsed last month, so the
Bells are expected to charge more for access. Accordingly, alternative
"last mile" connections into homes, such as BPL or wireless broadband,
are getting more attention, AT&T executives said.

But BPL still has problems. The technology can be unreliable, and it's
still very expensive. These two drawbacks have tempered its use.

Current Communications Group and Cinergy Broadband, a subsidiary of a
Midwestern utility with the same name, in March teamed up for one of the
largest commercial rollouts of BPL. However, there are about two dozen
ongoing trials of the technology throughout the United States, AT&T
said.