With $7 billion of government money on the line, it’s no surprise that all kinds of companies are claiming they can wire the most isolated ranchers and cave dwellers with broadband Internet service.
On Thursday, I.B.M. piped up to say that it is working with rural electric cooperatives to offer high-speed Internet service, delivered over electric power lines.
Technology to send broadband over power lines has been around for several years, but it typically hasn’t been able to offer enough capacity at a low enough price to beat service from cable and phone companies.
But with government subsidies, the approach is starting to be deployed in areas that don’t have access to other forms of broadband.
IBM Global Services is actually a contractor working for International Broadband Electric Communications, a Huntsville, Ala., company that has developed both the technology and service model to make the system work, at least in rural areas without other broadband offerings. The companies began deploying Internet service last year with one rural cooperative in Alabama , and this week announced an expansion to include five more cooperatives in Alabama, Indiana, Michigan and Virginia.
There appears to be pent-up demand in these areas. One Michigan cooperative signed up 5,000 customers in the first two weeks, said Raymond Blair, the director of advanced networks for I.B.M.
Source: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/19/ibm-delivers-rural-broadband-over-power-lines/
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