Duke to widen Internet via power lines: Deal with small firm offers service to 6,000

CHARLOTTE, NORTH CAROLINA - Duke Energy Corp. and a tiny Boston technology company want to turn every power outlet in your home into a ready-made portal for broadband access to the Internet and beyond.

Ambient Technology, a 37-employee company near Boston, announced Duke as the first customer for its broadband power line technology. Up to 6,000 Duke Energy customers in southern Charlotte would be the recipients of the service under a pilot program that already provides broadband to more than 500 Duke customers in the area.

Ambient, a $30 million company that trades as a penny stock, was the winner of a technology derby of sorts inside the power company.

After several years of trials, Ambient was chosen to expand Duke's existing pilot program that uses various technologies, said Ram Rao, chief technology officer for Ambient.

"Essentially, we utilize existing power lines... to deliver communication signals," he said. "One of the advantages is every single (power) outlet in your house can be your Internet connection. So the whole house is ready-wired."

The technology employs a special box - about the size of a pack of playing cards - that plugs into power outlets. On the side facing out is a plug-in for a data line that delivers the broadband signal. Duke would contract with Internet service providers to complete the service.

"Basically, we were looking for the technology to expand it. We had been testing new technologies, and now we feel we have (it)," said Tom Shiel, Duke Energy spokesman. "We see this as an opportunity to do further explorations in this. We still have to do the testing to see if this works."

Ambient also provides boxes on poles throughout the power network that would help create a so-called smart grid. The communication network would allow it to monitor power levels and the health of transformers. The technology would act as a monitoring system that ideally would detect problems and send alarms to prevent power outages and power surges. Duke also would like to read meters remotely, using the Ambient technology.

"What this will allow us to do is monitor our distribution system from transformer to transformer. This has obvious benefits in power outages," Shiel said.