Last week at the Blandin Pre-Planning Stimulus Funding meeting someone mentioned BPL – broadband over power lines. The community was interested in BPL as a cost-effective way to get broadband to their area without needing to dig up a lot of ground.

Several people in the meeting immediately dismissed BPL as a legitimate solution. The quality would never be good enough. Now I’m not mentioning the next article to dispute them – but to learn more myself.

Apparently Washington Island, Wisconsin is one of the most recent BPL addition to the IBM plan with local partner, Washington Island Electric Co-op. They have 238 customers connected via BPL.

Raymond Blair, IBM’s director of advanced networks, said “broadband-over-power-line technology makes the most economic sense in the least populated places, where there might be a dozen or so customers per mile of line. The service is slower than what’s available through cable and phone, but it’s 10 times faster than dial-up service.”

So I’m wondering if there might be a future for BPL. Also I think this opens a larger discussion of which is more important – getting everyone an option for broadband or upgrading the broadband that folks can access.