It’s of course not without its downsides, the most significant of which is the lack of standardization across the national electricity network. Another is the issue of managing the noise on power lines, which are already a noisy environment from a transmission perspective. All this speculation may be moot, however, as the largest planned U.S. deployment of the technology has been scrapped by Oncor, a Texas utility company buying out the network. The system was poised to offer Internet service to 2 million electricity customers, but Oncor has decided to use the wires for power only. Without this new launch, the number of BPL subscribers in the U.S. remains under 5,000. In the business of high speed data delivery, that figure spells almost certain future demise. Via PhysOrg
