ISPs Owned By...Power Companies?

Jkior asks: "I've been using a local ISP - no problems for over a year and excellent service. Recently, however, they were bought out by a regional electric company. Which started me wondering - considering the GB/S or so bandwidth planned by MediaFusion, using the power lines. Is this happening anywhere else? Could power companies be seeing the possibilities in this?" MediaFusion's basic plan is to use the magnetic field surrounding the powerline as a communications medium as opposed to voltage or amplitude modulation. Since power lines connect more people than even phone and cable, might the beginnings of a true broadband global network be right around the corner?

Comments

Economics often don't pan out...

[human bean]

I looked at this technology in my last job, for running broadband networking around a remote oilfield. Two things came to light:

One was that Nortel had stopped R+D on their bid to do this, mainly because the bandwidth available did not stand up economically to future requirements. Too little too late, and optical fiber had more promise.

Two, because of the planning and engineering needed to install the basic tranceivers, and the lack of mass manufacturing of same, it was cheaper to install optical fiber. Not to mention the lowered insurance and labor costs of installing away from substations and transmission lines.