Mon Aug 2,11:54 AM ET
Peter Coffee - eWEEK
Source Yahoo News

Bad things happen when ideal IT concepts bump into the realities of imperfect hardware. This time, I'm talking about the slow-motion train wreck of BPL (broadband over power lines), a basically bad idea that's now the subject of a newly launched IEEE standard process.

With lots of people wanting its benefits and few people understanding its drawbacks, BPL seems likely to gain too much momentum to be killed. A win for BPL, though, could be a loss for some valuable applications of the radio spectrum—but you'd never know that there's a serious risk, or even a controversy, if all you saw was the IEEE's cheerful July 20 announcement of IEEE P1675, "Standard for Broadband over Power Line Hardware."

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