Paul Kapustka's Blog

Case in point: From the very same public FCC meeting Thursday that prompted commissioner Michael Copps'declaration that "we are behind the game in putting high-speed, high-value bandwidth to work for all our citizens," the FCC did in fact unanimously vote to speed up the deployment of BPL and make more spectrum available for wireless net access, according to the National Journal's account of the meeting.

For BPL, the FCC basically said that it wouldn't ban the development of the technology, for the moment tossing out interference concerns of entities that include "ham" radio operators and TV broadcasters until there are more data. For wireless, the FCC said that the hoped-for 700 MHz chunk of spectrum that is supposed to be turned over by broadcasters by 2008 (betting line coming on this one soon) may be split into geographic chunks, giving smaller providers some hope in the bidding process.

Combine these actions with some on-the-ground happenings -- like the testing of a WiMAX/Wi-Fi blend to provide wireless access to train commuters in Silicon Valley, or the serious RFP process in the idea of building a Silicon Valley-wide free Wi-Fi net, and you have the seedlings of some hope that someday soon, real broadband alternatives may arise.

Sure, there are still a lot of technological hurdles to cross over, as always, but then again five years ago did you think you'd be downloading movies to something the size of a cell phone? At this point I would bet more heavily on wireless than BPL, only because I don't know much about BPL technology but I do know something about the relative (low) quality and stability of electrical wiring in houses, and not sure that's the best place for communications to go next.

Of course, I'd love to be proven wrong. Anne Broache's well-researched story over at C/Net provides more details about the BPL side of things.