If you've got electrical outlets in your walls, you're a potential customer of a handful of companies offering a fledgling service, high-speed Internet channeled over the nation's power lines.
Rather than installing a cable modem or DSL telephone line, customers plug a power line modem into any electrical outlet. Until now, though, delivering broadband over power lines has been mostly experimental.
Dr. Sanford Glazer, a periodontist and retired naval officer, jumped at the chance to try out the emerging technology in his Potomac home. He signed up for a free trial offered by Germantown-based Current Communications Group and Potomac Electric Power Co. The Montgomery County resident has Internet connections on four computers, including a laptop connected via a wireless access modem plug.
"I can plug it in any place and walk around anyplace in my house with the laptop, or go out on the deck," said Glazer, who uses the Internet to do research, check e-mail and send large data files in seconds. "It's extremely convenient ... and it's extremely reliable. "
With a recent Federal Communications Commission ruling that paves the way for widespread deployment, companies such as Current say they're poised to compete in a big way with the cable and DSL providers that have dominated the market.
The market is huge and growing. According to the most recent statistics from Boston-based Yankee Group, about 22.4 million U.S. households had broadband service last year, about 20 percent of all Internet households. Yankee expects total broadband households to increase to nearly 30 million subscribers this year.
"The FCC decision is going to affect the ability to bring more broadband signal to more people, quicker and more economically," said Ron Pickett, president and chief executive of Telkonet Inc., a Germantown company that distributes high-speed Internet over electrical wires to hotels, apartments and offices. "There's no question about that. It's costly to run cable, and it's costly even to get telephone DSL service everywhere.
"This will allow the existing electrical system, either on poles or underground, to be the conduit to carry the Internet signal at the same time they carry electricity," Pickett said.
Previously, broadband over power lines (BPL) had been limited because of concerns about interference, especially on frequencies used by amateur radio operators. Last month, the FCC moved to allow widespread use after deciding that the interference problems were manageable.
