Broadband through your electric: Europe wants more

The EC wants Europe to put more effort into grid. Only it's not grid computing that's catching the Commission's eye - it's the electricity grid.

The European Commission is pushing its 25 member states to look a lot more closely at supplying broadband through the electricity grid and is opening up competition in the broadband-through-power-lines market.

The Union is hoping that market liberalisation will make broadband over the electricity grid more attractive to new companies and encourage existing utility suppliers to use their infrastructure to supply broadband. To that end, the EU is asking member states to remove 'regulatory obstacles' from the market.

The EU is hoping it can use the technology to address the digital divide, with around 200 million power lines running into homes, schools and businesses across the EU.

However, broadband over a power line is still very much a minority phenomenon, with around 80 small-scale trials and rollouts occurring across Europe.

According to analyst house Research and Markets, it won't stay that way for long. The analyst predicts broadband over power lines is now mature enough to threaten the established broadband technologies, with the access services market set to increase with a compound annual growth rate of 86 per cent over the next seven years.

Access services were worth $57.1m in 2004, Research and Markets said.