BPL, Today's Reading Assignment
BPL or broadband over power lines, permits net access anywhere an electrical outlet exists. Click here to read the FCC document (internal link) explaining and allowing this service. It's possible every hard corded electrical device in a house or office could be instantly networked over that building's electrical lines. With suitable software and chipsets your refrigerator could communicate with your television or your alarm system could talk to your garage door opener. Ubiquitous computing made real. Going further, with VOIP you could have a telephone outlet every place you plug in an appliance. Neat technology, if only the BPL industry can solve interference problems and develop products to work with the service. But it will happen.
New York Times illustration