[Stuart]

Originally Posted by James Henry

Scottish and Southern Electricity tried it, and have all but abandoned it, due to the high coverage of ADSL in the UK.

IIRC, it's been tried a few times. Failed every time. Still, that won't stop them trying again.

It's a dirty technology anyway, bad RF polluter, the current generations of the technology are slow and unreliable, and it's tough to make a good business case for it as the equipment has to be installed so close to consumers that each install of kit covers relatively few homes so you need a very high uptake of the service to make it worthwhile, which is unlikely when over 99% of the country can get ADSL from 200+ different ISPs.

Apart from anything else, doesn't the broadband speed drop dramatically if someone plugs a device with a heavy current usage (such as a drill) into the circuit?

Much easier to get an ADSL or Cable connection (after all, most people have either a BT phone or a cable connection) and a wireless router.
[quoite]

Provides standard data rate of 2.5 Mb/s at user level, using a highly efficient modem, specially designed to operate in noisy power line environments.

Pretty underwhelming.[/quote]

And, again, IIRC, that's assuming you are near the local substation and have hardly any people on that circuit.