BPL System Shut Down As Uneconomic 300 Customers Sent Back To Dial-Up Speed.

A United States power company, PPL Corp., is abandoning it's BPL trial because the technology proved unprofitable. Its subsidiary, PPL Broadband, will cut Internet access to 300 residential customers at the end of the month, the company said.

In what may prove a prophetic warning to Aurora Energy in Tasmania, when PPL first launched the technology in Emmaus the borough was an untapped high-speed Internet market virtually passed over by the cable and telephone companies.

That opening, however, proved short-lived. Broadband competition came quickly, and BPL proved not viable in the face of stiff competition from cable and telephone companies and a small (1.3 million!) potential customer base. ''The economies of scale wouldn't work,'' a PPL representative said.

For many customers, it was the only high-speed Internet access at their disposal. PPL said it will give customers a $50 credit to ease the transition to a new Internet service provider, however it was not stated how much customers had already spent connecting to the PPL service.

The original article by Sam Kennedy of "The Morning Call" see the story via the following Link

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