Powerline Communications Overview

Connecting to the Internet is a fact of life for business, government, and most households. The lure of e-commerce, video on demand, and e-mail has brought 60 million people to the Internet. Once they get to the Internet, they find out what it’s really like. That includes long waits for popular sites, substantial waits for secure sites, and horrible video quality over the web.

Telephone companies have offered high bandwidth lines for many years. For the most part, the cost of these lines and the equipment needed to access them has limited their usefulness to large businesses. The lone exception has been ISDN (Integrated Services Digital Network) which has won over some residential customers. ISDN offers fast Internet access (128k) at a relatively low cost.

Here the solution is Powerline communications (or PLC). Powerline communications is a rapidly evolving market that utilizes electricity power lines for the high-speed transmission of data and voice services.

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