Norweb promises IP over power lines by year end

Norweb Communications has insisted Internet access and voice services over electricity lines will be a reality by the end of the year.

In an exclusive interview with Silicon News, Norweb's managing director, Mark Ballett, said technical glitches have been solved, and the company - which is owned by United Utilities - expects to start selling equipment based on digital power line (DPL) technology to other providers in the near future.

Ballett said: "We are known for our quality of service - we get that from our utilities background - and we're different to telecoms companies in Europe, which are backed by utilities companies, because they compete on price: they don't have DPL."

Norweb intends to market a plug-in device which comes with an IP phone jack, a universal serial bus (USB) connection and a slot for a screen, which can act as a thin client. DPL will allow 'always on' services charged at a flat rate, according to Ballett. As such, they will be priced differently to traditional dial-up services, even though Norweb has said it plans on becoming a regional Internet Service Provider (ISP) covering the Northwest of England.

Last October, Norweb and Canada's Nortel announced they were working on the technology, and have since formed Nor.Web DPL as a vehicle to "unleash the next wave of Net growth". Data sent over ordinary power lines will travel at more than one megabit per second - 10 times faster than ISDN.

However, some observers mocked the two companies' claims, even citing instances when phone conversations and radio stations were said to be broadcast inadvertently from lamp posts during trials. "Radio hams in particular spread some rumours," said Ballett, "but the Radio Agency has found no problems."