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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 U.S. 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 recently 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 kilometer, (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 Corp., which
has taken part in prior trials of power-line broadband.
Reuters
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