Broadband Over Powerline, BPL
Broadband over Power Lines (BPL) aka Powerband is the use of Power Line Communication (PLC) technology to provide broadband Internet access through ordinary power lines.
Broadband over powerlines has been regarded as the “holy grail” by many because it gets around the biggest challenge to broadband providers — building cable infrastructure. Although there are many engineering challenges in providing broadband over power lines, the infrastructure is already built in most countries — including good penetration into rural areas.
BPL can deliver up to 135 Mbps at the application layer, but generally speeds of 256 kbps to 2.7 Mbps are offered to consumers.
There is an IEEE draft standard; IEEE P1901 - Draft Standard for Broadband over Power Line Networks: Medium Access Control and Physical Layer Specifications .
Another competing evolving standard is the HomePlug power alliance which defined the HomePlug 1.0 and the HomePlug AV technologies.
Devolo has an interesting product that uses HomePlug, the MicroLink dLAN Audio.
These specifications are aimed in-home distribution, while the HomePlug BPL is a to-the-home technology.
Testing of this technology is conducted by various ISPs across the globe, and some are even deploying the technology widescale.