Putting BPL In Its Place

Broadband over Power Lines, or BPL, has been a boondoggle for years. Initially touted as a leading contender for establishing a third broadband pipe into homes to compete with DSL and cable, it has since proven to be an unreliable technology that can't deliver the capacity needed to be a truly competitive alternative.

And to be frank, I've long seen it as a distraction, yet another technology that's more rhetoric than reality, diverting attention away from technologies that can compete like fiber and potentially wireless. So I wasn't upset by the notion that its time had already passed.

So imagine my surprise when I came across this article this morning entitled, "IBM to help build broadband network in power lines."

Apparently IBM is teaming up with a new company called International Broadband Electric Communications Inc. to deploy BPL across large swathes of rural America.

What's interesting about this is that they admit that BPL can't compete with cable and DSL; it costs too much for not enough speed. So instead of trying to establish it as a third pipe, they're going to focus on areas that aren't being adequately served by cable or DSL, where 86% of homes have no other broadband options. Within the next two years they plan on working with electric cooperatives to build out to reach 340,000 homes.

On the surface this is kind of exciting. I'm all for anything that allows more people to get online who can't today.

But digging a little deeper there's still a lot of uncertainty.

First off, as far as I can tell there's been no mention of what speeds will ultimately be offered. I suppose anything will be better than nothing, but it's hard to get too excited without knowing what users will be receiving.

Secondly, they mention prices starting at $30 a month. While that's cheaper than satellite, which is typically the option of last resort for connectivity, I'd like to see a basic package under $20. If we're trying to get people who may have never used the Internet before and don't understand its value, we can't expect them to pay too much for it.

Third, I can't get over the sense that at best BPL is nothing more than a stopgap technology. While it'd be great to give rural users a way to get online, ultimately we need to be focused on providing them with the kind of connectivity that can support the kind of applications and economic development that only full fiber networks make possible.

But some of the rhetoric being used to describe this initiative has me worried that its impact is being blown out of proportion: "'The technology is important but what's really important is this is a seminal moment in the delivery of broadband services to rural customers,' said Bill Moroney, the head of the Utilities Telecom Council, an industry trade group."

The simple truth about BPL is that it really only works for three purposes:

- As a stopgap technology to be used only until something better can be put into place.
- As a way for utilities to monitor their electrical networks.
- As a solution for in-home networking.

This last purpose is the area that gets me most excited about BPL. Imagine a day when all your appliances are smart, but rather than everything having to have Ethernet ports or wireless cards built in to connect to the Internet instead all you had to do is plug in the power cord and get connected via BPL.

In my mind, that's where our energy developing BPL should be focused as that's got unlimited potential, whereas broadband via BPL has a limited future as it can't compete with alternative technologies.

The most important thing to remember in all this, though, is that while it could be great to get more people online who can't do so today, we can't take our eye off the ball when it comes to planning out these areas' broadband future. We can't say that now that these places have BPL we don't have to worry about them anymore.

And I'm hopeful that even advocates of BPL understand this as the second part of the quote from Moroney I pulled out of the article above states: ""Here's a beginning and really a great leap forward."

I couldn't agree more. This BPL to rural areas initiative is a beginning not the endgame. As long as we keep that in mind and put BPL in its place, then this will be a terrific step forward.