FCC endorses broadband over power lines
The U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has rejected requests by several groups, including amateur radio operators, TV broadcasters, and aeronautical companies, to severely limit or completely ban broadband services over power lines because of radio interference issues.
In a Memorandum Opinion and Order adopted on Thursday, the FCC affirmed the right of broadband power line (BPL) operators to provide communications services over power transmission lines provided their services don't interfere with existing radio services.
Efforts to use electricity cables to transmit data took a step forward in Europe earlier this year with the publication of an open specification for power line communications (PLC).
The Open PLC European Research Alliance (OPERA), partly funded by the European Commission, said its specification will accelerate the development of products that use power lines for broadband Internet access, voice and video services, as well as utility applications such as automatic meter reading.
Products based on the specification will deliver data at speeds of more than 200Mbps, according to OPERA. It is based on OFDM (Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing) modulation and offers both FD (Frequency Division) and TD (Time Division) repeating capabilities.
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