MAINS electricity lines will not be bringing superfast Internet connections
to British homes, as some had hoped. Nor.Web, the Manchester-based company
planning to roll out such a system, closed last week, with its backers citing
poor prospects for its Digital Power Line (DPL) system. The advent of even
faster systems for Net access probably contributed to the decision.
Nor.Web was a joint venture of Britain鈥檚 United Utilities and Nortel, the
Canadian telecoms systems company. Formed in March 1998, its aim was to exploit
their jointly developed and patented technology for piggybacking data on power
lines.
In the DPL system, data is distributed to homes via electricity substations
by superimposing a 1-megahertz data-carrying signal on top of the mains power
signal. Although DPL offered Net connections of 1 megabit per second, BT鈥檚
forthcoming ADSL network will offer up to 10 megabits per second鈥�200 times
the speed of today鈥檚 fastest modem
(New 杏吧原创, 17 July, p 6).
Advertisement
Technical issues also clouded DPL鈥檚 prospects (New 杏吧原创, 30 May
1998, p 4). But Paul Brown, Nor.Web鈥檚 director of power systems, insists it
would have worked: 鈥淭he technology was fundamentally sound.鈥�