[EIDXA] Yahoo--Little Too Late

[Jim Spencer]

http://tinyurl.com/3uvrn

Little Too Late 

Not all power companies will find the going so smooth. "Not all 
companies are going to do this. It may be too late," said Lisa 
Pierce, an analyst with Forrester Research. "The smart ones will 
partner with an experienced broadband provider or a telecom," she 
told NewsFactor. 

One of those telecoms will not be AT&T. Last summer the company 
decided to get out of the consumer market. "The FCC's decision is a 
little too late," said company spokesman Mike Dickman. 


"We were involved in exactly this technology, but we changed the 
focus of our business back in July to serve enterprise customers," he 
told NewsFactor. AT&T had been testing BPL services with Pacific Gas 
& Electric, but that project was dropped. 


The company says its hand was forced when the Bush administration 
decided to leave unchallenged a court ruling that allowed local phone 
companies essentially to exercise monopolies over their wired 
infrastructure. AT&T could, in theory, still offer services over the 
wires of a local firm, but that firm could charge whatever it wanted. 


BPL, while an exciting new technology that would beef up competition 
by offering customers more choices of broadband providers, may not 
take the industry by storm. If it is not lucrative enough for AT&T to 
bite on, it may take a while before you start plugging your broadband 
connection into the electrical outlet. 

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