MediaPost.com reports:
ON FRIDAY, DURING THE CLOSING day of Madison Avenue’s annual media conference, the government’s top media technologist predicted electric utility companies might transform the telecommunications industry providing broadband services anywhere there is an “electric pole,” and transmitting data to anything that “uses electricity.” If that proves the case, it was not evident in a recent survey asking consumers whom they wanted to receive their telecommunications services from. Asked whom they believe would provides the best service and value for bundled TV, phone and Internet service, U.S. consumers overwhelmingly selected TV service providers including cable system (29 percent) and satellite TV (22 percent) operators, according to results of an annual study scheduled to be released today by Knowledge Networks/SRI. Local phone companies placed a close third (21 percent), followed by Internet service providers (19 percent), but electric utility companies (8 percent) didn’t exactly show the juice. “Based on the response to this survey, utility companies don’t appear to be much of a factor, at least not yet,” said David Tice, vice president-client service at KK/SRI. He noted, however, that the concept of telecommunications service from utility companies is still relatively knew – the FCC only recently authorized broadband over utility lines – and that the results likely reflected “an incumbent issue.”
Seriously, though, how can you realistically trust a utility company to reliably and economically provide data service? AC power is one thing. Broadband data service a completely different thing. One can only hope that utility companies will realize that they are in over their heads and pull the plug on BPL.
Read the entire story here.
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