AT&T has started trials in Georgia state to deliver high-speed internet over power lines, says it has no timeline for commercial deployment
Anjali Athavaley / Reuters :
Context & Ripple Effects
This trial is the payoff of a plan AT&T laid out more than a year earlier, when it unveiled its approach for multi-gigabit internet delivered over shaped radio transmissions guided by power lines and promised field trials in 2017. Georgia is where that promise lands: the state's grid becomes the test bed for whether existing power infrastructure can carry broadband without new wireline builds.
The experiment sits inside a broader AT&T pattern of reaching customers outside its traditional footprint — from 2015 rural wireless broadband tests at 15-25 Mbps to drone-based LTE for disaster areas — all aimed at covering places fiber economics don't reach.
First-order effects
- AT&T gains real-world performance and interference data on power-line-guided transmission in Georgia, but by publicly ruling out a deployment timeline it signals the technology is still pre-commercial rather than a near-term product.
- Georgia utilities and regulators become de facto partners in the trial, since the approach depends on access to and behavior of their line infrastructure.
Second-order effects
- If the trials show viable speeds, AT&T's fixed-wireless and fiber roadmaps gain a third delivery option for underserved markets, pressuring rivals serving rural geographies to accelerate their own non-fiber builds.
- Power-line delivery would make electric grid operators potential gatekeepers for broadband expansion, inserting them into deals that previously ran only through telecom channels.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, carriers increasingly treat any existing physical network — power lines, towers, even airborne platforms — as candidate broadband substrate, shifting competition from who owns spectrum toward who can lease rights over others' infrastructure.
- The eventual 2022 move to reach unserved states through a capital-partnered joint venture shows where this trajectory points: broadband expansion funded and structured as infrastructure investment rather than organic network rollout.
The trend: Broadband coverage races are shifting from laying new wireline plant to repurposing whatever infrastructure already exists — power grids, drones, wireless — with carrier R&D trials deciding which substrate scales first.