Broadband service
over power lines has been highly touted by
equipment makers and federal regulators as a
possible competitor to cable and telephone
services that handle nearly all of the 30
million US residential broadband
connections.
But despite dozens of
trials, few electric utilities have attempted to
sell the service to customers, citing cost and
technical problems. The Penn State researchers
said while the technology would improve,
lowering the costs of power-line broadband would
remain challenging.
Power-line broadband systems
available today typically promise data speeds of
roughly one megabit to three megabits per
second, similar to cable and digital subscriber
line, or DSL, service.
The Penn State engineers, Pouyan
Amirshahi and Mohsen Kavehrad, estimated in a
research paper released Wednesday that their
system could deliver data at close to one
gigabit per second over medium-voltage
electrical lines in ideal conditions, with
speeds of hundreds of megabits per second
available to home users.
Their system would uses
repeaters placed every one kilometre, (0.62
miles) and requires power lines to have been
modified to reduce interference with the data
signals. The engineers said their estimates were
based on computer models, and that the data
speeds available in a real-world version would
depend on how many repeaters a power company
used.
The Penn State study was funded
with a grant from AT&T, which has taken part
in prior trials of power-line broadband.