Brett Kilbourne, Director of Regulatory Services, Associate Counsel, and spokesperson for the United Power Line Council

The United Power Line Council (UPLC) was set up by the United Telecom Council (UTC) to drive "the development of broadband over power line (BPL) solutions for electric utilities and their partners."

Brett Kilbourne is Director of Regulatory Services and Associate Counsel at the UPLC. He spoke today with Broadband over Power Line World about a wide range of BPL-related subjects.

Included in the conversation were detailed discussions of: how the UPLC emerged from the UTC; existing deployments of BPL within individual homes and offices, in which Internet access is routed through the internal wiring of a site; how BPL can interfere with other electronic media; how the FCC's October 14, 2004, adoption of rules regarding the resolution of interference issues and the establishment of standards for BPL influenced the accelerated pace of BPL activity; the presence and co-operation of both investor-owned and publicly-owned power line companies in the UTC and the UPLC; the technical means by which Internet signals can be transmitted up and down a BPL-enabled network; the cost of BPL access in comparison with DSL and cable modems; the synergy possible between "dark fiber" (or fiber-to-the-node) and BPL, within which fiber-optic cables "insert" Internet connectivity into power lines that carry it for the "last mile" into homes and businesses; the timetable for BPL deployment; the role of VoIP over BPL; the competitive situation for BPL, cable modems, and DSL; the broadband transmission speeds possible with BPL; and the crucial role that BPL may be able to play in bringing broadband Internet access to homes and businesses in sparsely-populated and currently-underserved areas of the country.

You can hear this comprehensive discussion of these and other aspects of broadband over power line with UPLC spokesperson Brett Kilbourne by clicking here.