1.

broadband over power lines

1.1 Background The Internet of today is in the process of a dramatic change. As society becomes increasingly reliant on the Internet as a critical medium of communication, the bandwidth necessary to carry this information is also growing rapidly. The shift from 56 Kbps dial-up access to multi-megabit connectivity has been termed by many as The Broadband Revolution. Although the narrowband Internet is universally available to all homes over the public switched telephone network (PSTN), the infrastructure necessary for delivering ubiquitous broadband access does not necessarily exist. Many new technologies are currently used to provide broadband access, including Digital Subscriber Lines (DSL), cable modems, fixed wireless, and broadcast satellite. However, none of these access technologies have the capability to reach every home in America such as the power utilities can. By utilizing the existing power line utility infrastructure, broadband over power line (BPL) presents the unique opportunity to provide truly universal broadband access. 1.2 Purpose and Scope The purpose of this thesis is two-fold. The first objective is to assess the obstacles BPL faces to gaining widespread acceptance and address what role technology will play in addressing these obstacles. The second objective is to determine what objectives must be achieved to ensure the feasibility of BPL and conjecture how these objectives will allow BPL to serve as a competitive broadband access technology. This thesis will educate the reader with the fundamental background knowledge of BPL technology that is necessary to interference, its relation to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) rulemaking process, and how the rules established for BPL will ultimately affect its ability to coexist. The reader will be introduced to the foundations of regulated industries and theorize how BPL will fair as a competitive service in a non-competitive industry. We will explain the economic principle of externalities and argue how the inherent positive externalities existing in BPL services may be properly accounted for. Finally, this thesis will argue what objectives BPL must achieve to gain widespread acceptance as a

competitive broadband access technology.