Unfortunately sometime in 2005 I realized Duke Nukem Forever and Perl 6 had better chances of seeing the light of day than BPL.

Today I got confirmation that not only is BPL not-gonna-happen, but it quietly died when no one was looking:

Jones said these utility-built networks are “just not panning out like utilities were expecting.” Broadband over powerline is one example, where existing infrastructure could be leveraged to combine broadband to the home and smart metering services. However, there’s no successful large-scale BPL rollout anywhere in the world after a decade of trying.

From the Ars Technica article
AT&T plugs into grid, powers smart meters’ conversations.

The article is all about utilities turning to AT&T for data connectivity to electrical meters. That task was supposed to be Job 1 for BPL. The one feature it could actually offer to utilities to convince them that becoming an ISP wasn’t entirely outside their business model.

Anyone have a copy of the obituary?

While in 2005 Google and Goldman Sachs were pumping money into BPL, I don’t think I’ve seen it mentioned in the news in at least a couple of years.

So did I miss the funeral, or is there some BPL company promising a just-around-the-corner breakthrough to finally make BPL an option?

The Ars article outlined a reason that I’ve run into first hand at a rural electric cooperative I worked at: utilities have no desire to become an ISP.  There’s absolute zero overlap in employee skills, technologies, and materials other than the physical power lines.  Its like McDonalds selling clothes because… well… why not?  And considering BPL isn’t going to be any cheaper than DSL or Cable, there’s probably not much money to be made.

Before you bring up the untapped rural broadband market, don’t forget: BPL isn’t a rural broadband solution.  If you read into any of the technologies you’ll find that BPL doesn’t do well over long distances, so you need to run fiber and wireless links out to substations.  While the rural broadband market does exist, its pretty small and wireless technology is quickly catching on.

There’s also the problem that large power companies are probably one of the few industries more inept and anti-consumer than cable and telecom companies.  If you live in Illinois and get your power from Ameren, you know what I’m talking about.  There’s also the wonderful example of Enron which dabbled in bandwidth markets before realizing the utility industry was designed to be gamed.

The only reason Google dumped cash into a BPL company is because Google is desperate to get every man, woman, child, and cow in the world connected to the Internet to view AdWords.

I’m sorry to anyone out there using a satellite connection and praying for the day BPL will emancipate them… don’t hold your breath.