text: Mexico tests new technology - Business Live
  Mexico tests new technology
  Mexico is testing a new technology for internet and voice services using power networks that could help telephone companies reach final customers more easily and expand phone coverage.
  State-owned electricity provider CFE has tested different power line communications (PLC) technologies, looking for the best way to bring highspeed data and broadband communications to homes using existing power grids.
  The project is still in early stages, but CFE hopes to offer PLC to phone operators in the second half of 2005, according to Jose Antonio Lopez Morales, head of CFE's modernisation unit.
  PLC uses small dishes installed at the top of lamp posts to receive data via microwaves. Signals are transformed into low voltage and delivered to schools, Internet cafes or offices.
  By using the power grid, the largest network on earth, all power sockets can send, or receive, communications signals and users only need to plug in a cheap, modem-enhanced phone set.
  But PLC has some drawbacks.
  The service interferes with equipment that operates on radio frequencies and gets interrupted during blackouts. Steep voltage fluctuations and blackouts are frequent across Mexico.