High-Speed Internet Over Power Lines Could Serve Millions

[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Dionne Searcey dionne.searcey@wsj.com and Rebecca Smith]
Current Communications Group LLC and TXU Electric Delivery plan to offer high speed Internet access over electric power lines to over two million customers in Texas by the end of 2006. Current's rollout to a wide swath of customers in the Dallas-Fort Worth area and elsewhere in Texas is a sign that the technology is more than a fad. The service will be offered in TXU's traditional utility territory in North Texas, which has overlap with areas now served by Time Warner and Charter Communications as well as AT&T and Verizon Communications, which are spending billions of dollars to upgrade their networks with fiber. Under the terms of the agreement, TXU, the biggest utility company in Texas, will sign a 10-year contract for $150 million to use Current's technology to get instantaneous alerts about outages and to gather information about its electrical system. The technology eventually could be used to read meters and even to remotely shut off or turn on power, eliminating utility jobs. There are regulatory hurdles since the transmission and distribution systems that form the backbone are regulated assets and utilities must seek approval to use them in this new way. Texas became the first state this year to pass a law permitting utility holding companies to set up separate concerns, funded with shareholder dollars, that would make the investments and reap the rewards, insulating utility customers from a possible costly boondoggle. But in most states, utilities would be expected to share profits or savings with rate payers, reducing incentive for utilities to pursue a broadband strategy. Top officials at the Federal Communications Commission have expressed support for such power-line services because they could expand the availability of high-speed Internet access to rural communities that the big providers ignore because of the cost of establishing service in areas with low concentrations of users. In suburban Washington, D.C., Current has set up a home to conduct demonstrations of its power-line broadband. Among the 5,000 people who have visited include FCC chairman Kevin Martin, former FCC chairman Michael Powell, Richard Russell, technology adviser at the White House and members of Congress.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB113496015165026111.html?mod=todays_us_ma...
(requires subscription)