FCC classifies Broadband over Power Line as information service
The Federal Communications Commission has decided to classify Broadband over Power Line (BPL) as an information service, putting it in the same class as DSL and cable. As a result, BPL will follow those two broadband services down the road to deregulation in hopes that it will encourage utilities to begin offering BPL service.
Its backers have seen BPL for some time as the next big hope for broadband. Last year, Google and Goldman Sachs invested almost $100 million in BPL provider Current Communications Group. Current offers BPL in the Cincinnati area with download speeds ranging from 512Kbps to 3.0Mbps, with the top speed running $39.95 per month.
Despite the big hopes, BPL adoption has been slow to say the least. The latest numbers from the FCC showed fewer than 6,000 BPL subscribers nationwide at the end of 2005 and there is little data to show faster growth this year. In fact, BPL is hard to find. A Government Accounting Office report published in May 2006 characterized most BPL efforts so far as being in the "trial stage" with "limited" commercial deployments.
