Susan P. Kennedy, Commissioner, California Public Utilities Commission

Susan Kennedy, as listeners to a recent California Politics Today article entitled "Susan Kennedy, California Public Utilities Commissioner, is looking forward to a more "forward looking" CPUC as two new members come aboard in 2005," know, is very interested in streamlining the regulatory framework in order to get faster and more efficient deployments of advanced telecommunications technology within the State of California.

This general principle of hers in prominently on display in a shorter interview she did with CPT today about "broadband over power line" (BPL), which Commissioner Kennedy refers to in that conversation as "the fourth pipe into the home" for broadband (after DSL, cable modem, and wireless).

Saying that "it's criminal that California does not have a major BPL pilot project or commercial project underway and I intend to do everything we can to change that," Commissioner Kennedy made it clear that she wants to clear the way for BPL at the state level in the same way that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has done at the federal level.

Asked about a timetable for at least a demonstration project for BPL in California, Commissioner Kennedy said, "I'd be very surprised if we could not get something substantial going by mid-year in 2005."

Commissioner Kennedy's comments about the importance of clearing the regulatory brush and assuring the presence of broadband over power line in California comes at a time when many major utility companies, which might be expected to jump at the opportunity to fatten their bottom lines by rolling out broadband over power line to their millions of existing customers, who are already signed up and in their data bases and billing systems as users of electricity, are NOT jumping at the chance.

As reported in "Unlike PG&E and SCE, San Diego Gas & Electric will admit that it is "looking into" broadband over power line (BPL)," which appeared earlier this week on the Broadband over Power Line World website, two out of California's three largest investor-owned utilities, Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) and Southern California Edison (SCE), were either doing nothing in terms of BPL or were not willing to say that they were doing anything.

Only San Diego Gas & Electric (SDGS) (a Sempra Energy® utility) was willing to admit that it was "looking into" BPL.

And today, Trent Frager, a spokesperson for Excelon Energy Delivery, a power line company that "serves more than 3.6 million electricity customers in Northern Illinois through ComEd and about 1.5 million electricity…customers in Southeastern Pennsylvania through  PECO Energy, told Broadband over Power Line World that, for it, BPL is "not a focus. It's not something we are actively pursuing."

But BPL is something California Public Utilities Commissioner Susan Kennedy thinks utilities in California ought to be pursuing, so she's going to do what she can through drafting a resolution for the CPUC that will pave a path for BPL and then seeing it through to the point where utilities in the state can feel confident enough to proceed with developing and deploying this "fourth (broadband) pipe."

You can listen to Commissioner Kennedy's remarks about BPL in California in their entirety by clicking here.