Phase two
Progress Energy representatives said they have tested the technology enough to know it works in a laboratory environment. The EarthLink trials will determine whether BPL works in practice.
"This is our second phase" for BPL, said Matt Oja, the director of emerging technologies at Progress Energy. "The first [question] was does it even work? Now we're marketing it over EarthLink, the retail provider."
The companies expect to make a final decision at the end of the year after completing the market test.
The idea of turning to power companies as broadband purveyors has been floating around for many years, including within the FCC. Power lines are an attractive broadband delivery system because they are already in place and reach more homes than either cable systems or telephone lines.
But technology limitations, policy disputes and expensive failures have consistently left BPL hanging. Power grids were designed for the efficient delivery of electricity and so bring together a vast network or transformers to feed a myriad outputs for household appliances.
To date, BPL has mostly lighted the road to failure. In 1997, Nortel Networks, a telecommunications equipment maker, teamed up with British energy company United Utilities and formed Nor.Web, with the goal of offering broadband over an electricity grid. The venture set up a test in Manchester, England, but soon discovered a snag in its technology: neighbouring lampposts were picking up data signals and rebroadcasting them as radio waves.
The technical problems and the expense of the venture eventually were too much to bear. Nor.Web shut its doors in 1999.
"I've always been sceptical about the extreme version of broadband over power line," said Joe Laszlo, an analyst at Jupiter Research. "I think there are huge problems with the scenario. There are several impediments along the way that make it harder to transmit data over transformers."
Most of the FCC's proposed rules outline a set of technical standards to measure the quality of a BPL broadband signal and to create a public database of available BPL services.
