Touted as one possible answer to regional Australia’s lack of broadband in the bush, BPL has already undergone a number of trials in Australia and New Zealand, with a large-scale "trial" now under way in Hobart, Tasmania.

Aurora Energy (the principal electricty supplier for Tasmania) had already conducted a small-scale trial of BPL in Hobart. This trial, which lasted just two months, was limited to just four houses and two floors of the Aurora Energy building in Hobart.

The system used in the trial was based on the DS2 chipset which utilises Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) – with multiple discrete carriers approximately every 1.1 kHz between about 1.6MHz and 30MHz.

Apparently Aurora considered the trial a success – so much so that they have now launched a much larger trial over a wider area. And if the somewhat contradictory wording of the Aurora press release (see right) is to be believed, this new trial is the fore runner to a statewide rollout in the not-too-distant future.