Intellectual Property Law

Is BPL Down for the Count? Yup, Probably.

By Cynthia Brumfield

When it comes to communications policy in the U.S., there are two major goals -- either regulate in the absence of competition or spur more competition in order to obviate the need for regulation. That's the main reason why the FCC, led down the primrose path by proponents, glommed onto broadband-over-powerline (BPL) several years back.

But BPL, a kludgy technology aimed at squeezing communications-strength capacity out of power lines, is almost DOA in the USA. First, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia last week rapped the FCC on the knuckles for failing to take a look at studies that deal with BPL's propensity for interference as it rushed to adopt new rules promoting the competitive alternative.

Now, as Karl Bode points out, the biggest BPL advocate, Current Communications (one of the chief primrose path guides) is selling its high-profile Dallas BPL network to local utility Oncor for $90 million.

Oncor is going to use the "smart grid" set-up for...electricity. Although cities and utilities are largely responsible for the hype and public policy push surrounding BPL, I say all the idealistic and uninformed research outfits that pumped out study after study saying BPL was the next big thing are equally responsible for the unrealisitic hopes surrounding BPL.

Smart people have always know that BPL, although worth investigating, was never going to inject enough competition into the marketplace to give either cable or phone companies a run for their money.

Full post as published by IP Democracy on May 02, 2008 (boomark / email).