said by amigo_boy:said by nasadude:Right now, BPL is less relevant than sat broadband; and we see how well sat broadband is helping.
It has to start somewhere. I'd like to have BPL, DSL and cable and muni-wifi available so that I could subscribe to two and use a router with two WAN ports to load balance.
Competition is always good.
My electric company (Salt River Project) replaced my meter yesterday with a digital meter ("elster"). It's supposed to let them read the meter remotely. It has a LAN ID printed on the front. I meant to ask the installer if it used wifi or BPL. I'm thinking BPL because I didn't see an antenna.
It could be PLC based. PLC is the predecessor to BPL. It provides much less bandwidth than BPL, but it can use the power lines without special repeaters and it doesn't have the wireless interference issues that BPL has. PLC is more cost effective for meter reading than BPL, but conversely it can't provide broadband, though it's arguable whether BPL can scale to be a viable broadband service in the long run.
