BPL not ready, but .....

BPL not ready, but .....
Starting some years ago, there was a strong hype that BPL (broadband power line) could become another way to deliver cheap broadband services to households and premises, and compete with DSL. More recently, yet, a lot of trials were run worldwide. But it is time to acknowledge that nothing has changed. Except some limited deployments in Europe, the US and even in Asia, BPL did not succeed to live up to its promise: BPL is not ready for commercial deployments. BPL was seen as the technology to be deployed by utility companies pursuing new revenue opportunities, and some continue to believe in it. The ambition is certainly more limited, they do not talk any more of large deployments, but of a more opportunistic approach. In this context, IBM has surprisingly lined up behind the concept, and that may give the technology some lift. But for the moment, the goal is not to deploy broadband access to customers, but to support the utility for internal monitoring, ongoing assessment and monitoring of equipment usage. Is it the only way to justify BPL deployment?