Anyone heard about Broadband over power lines???

[Marcin Jessa]

On Tue, 23 May 2006 20:14:29 -0700 (PDT)
Mark Jayson Alvarez <jay2xra at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> A while ago, a group of individuals have demonstrated
> us with devices that can be used to extend your
> network throughout every corner of your company
> through the use of electric outlet... A quick googling
> tells me that such technologies are already existing
> long time ago and some Electric companies in other
> parts of the world also are now providing Internet
> services to their costumers at an added cost.. Do you
> know any ongoing opensource initiative regarding this
> technologies??

I read both Google and IBM working on solutions like that.
IBM works together with Centerpoint to supply people in Houston area
with 7Mbit/s lines. According to news.com they hooked up 220 houses.
Google invested about 100 million dollars in Current Communication
Group - http://www.currentgroup.com/ which is working on the same thing.
One of the el. companies here in Norway - Lyse Tele has about 300 pilot
customers giving them 1mbit over power lines.
They say they managed to reduce noise which could earlier affect
devices like baby sitters.

There are also end customer devices avaliable on the marked:
http://www.devolo.com/co_EN/index.html
http://www.netgear.com/products/details/XE104.php#performance
read also http://www.homeplug.org/en/index.asp

Cheers
Marcin.