In article ,
-=jd=- wrote:

I've heard it said that for the past several decades, society has been
steadily replacing things that work just fine, with stuff that merely
sounds "neat".

BPL may be yet another example.

During the dot.com boom, they were laying underground fiber all over.
(Downtown Seattle was especially bad, as the place was boomtown squared).
And most of it is lying in the ground unused because of "The Last Mile"
problem. It's as expensive to build the local distribution network to
get it from the fiber companies hub to individual customer sites as it
is to build the long distance network.

So along come the investor owned electrical utilities, who would just
love to have an unregulated business (so that they can get a more
profitable tap on the consumer's veins) yelling "WE CAN DO THAT".

With BPL they can set up in the business to compete with the cable and
telephone companies. So what if the stuff doesn't work, they can replace
it later with the same hardware the cable company uses. BAIT AND SWITCH.

And the regulated rate payers will probably foot a good part of the bill
because the whole company isn't making the profit levels the regulators
will allow.

Mark Zenier Washington State resident