... which are, in fact, "new". X over power lines is roughly as old as those wonderfully nostalgic Crumb comics, up there. Anybody else use X-10 controls in the house? I love 'em. Here's the zinger; X-10 was a "new technology" in ~ 1968. You could also buy intercom systems, back then, that used the power lines of your home instead of dedicated wiring or radio frequencies. This is old tech. Old, second rate tech, for high tolerence communications. Seriously, ever used one of those intercoms? The refrigerator comes on and you hear the static. The only place the tech might have a place is local systems. And, even there, it's going to be second rate. Why didn't home networking over power lines ever catch on? Back before wireless became economical, there were quite a few very slow, marginally dependable networking schemes that involved using the power lines in your home. No cat 5! No market penetration, either.

Fiber optics to the neighborhood, the curb and the home will become ubiquitous in a decade or so. Every telco in the country will eventually have to move to 100% fiber, someday soon, or be hopelessly stuck in the last century. Cable will be forced to upgrade and expand their systems to compete. And BPL will, probably, still be a glint in some subsidized, grant craving tech ninny's eye. Hint: "works in theory" and "works" are two related but entirely different things.

When, exactly, all this said, do they intend to roll out a high QoS, dependable BPL system, anyway? The day after the Hooterville Telephone Company and Cattle Exchange finishes installing its last mile of FTTP? This has to be one of the most exasperatingly wasteful, retro, weird science ideas going, right now. If we're looking for good places to toss money, maybe a starting point might be getting more fiber out faster, and into some of these underserved areas. Bluntly, they don't have to reinvent the wheel to deploy BPL. That wheel was invented a half century ago. It never caught on, for a relatively good reason. It never worked altogether that well. It was alright for low QoS, localized use, controls operation, and things along those lines, granted. You can inject spikes into the sine wave trivially, and use them to make things switch. Getting them to cross transformers and switches and all that's another story, of course. But if you don't have to, they work famously.

Now, try sharing a huge copper line between tons of extremely low frequency electromagnetic radiation and a dependable communications network. Power companies, take note: you own the rights of way, demmit!!! Get it? Hang fiber on those poles, just below those power lines, and sell internet service on that. It'll cost less, and work better, in the long haul. And you can sell the excess capacity... duh! In the meantime, please, don't inflate my power rates tossing good money after bad down a deep, dark rathole ... where (I suspect) the rat's reading this story over a fiber optical connection on his little rat sized computer (I wonder what he calls his mouse? ) and laughing so hard, he's sputtering cheese all over the keyboard.