In spite of being offered by companies for some years in Europe, Broadband Internet is in its early stages on the United States.

A new type of interenet connection is adopted in the U.S. - BPL (broadband over power line), a service intended to compete with the cable and phone companies that dominate the high-speed Internet market. There is no need for new cables and rewiring homes, because BPL uses the local power grid, which means that any home with electricity could get the service.

Jim Hofstetter, a salesman for Cadbury Schweppes, the food and beverage company is thrilled about the new service and beliefs that was the best option he could get. “I would never go back now that I have this,” said Hofstetter.

With a $30 per month, the service which uses the power lines run by Cinergy (a local utility company from Cincinatti), is about $15 cheaper than comparable Internet access from either Cincinnati Bell or Time Warner Cable. Any home user can access the service by plugging a jack into any electrical outlet in his home. Hofstetter says there is no problem with the speed even when he, his wife and their three daughters are online at the same time.

Until now only Current and Cinergy in Cincinnati, and the city of Manassas offer commercial BPL services in the United States. While the technology is not new, the home adapters and equipment on telephone poles that transmit data over power lines as radio signals have only recently become affordable enough for companies to start selling the service.

Many companies are looking at BPL as an alternative delivery system. “It doesn’t matter what pipe you use as long as you have a pipe into the house,” said Kevin Brand, the vice president for product management at EarthLink, which plans to introduce a BPL service in the first half of 2006. “The power companies don’t want to do this alone and they need an Internet provider like us to make this fly.”

There is a promising future for BPL. “I’m not sure we can make broadband much more simple than this,” said William H. Berkman, Current’s chairman. “It’s like when Wal-Mart automated everything.”