Panasonic shows BPL products at CES

That’s right sparky, the Japanese guys best known for consumer electronics are big in BPL networking! Panasonic is the dominant player in BPL devices in Japan, and they are predicting solid growth in the US. Showing product for the first time, and presumably we will be able to purchase products in the US sometime after the show concludes.

Among the powerline products, many of them prototypes, was a photo printer, all sorts of Ethernet bridges, a USB hub, a Wi-Fi router, a WiMax router, an MP4 player, a point-of-sales computer, and Ethernet phone adapters, many of them from Panasonic itself.

Despite years of promise, broadband-over-powerline has had little success in the United States. In late 2006, the FCC passed a resolution endorsing the technology, and IEEE last year moved to draft standards for the technology. Robin Sweeten, group manager of strategic marketing for Panasonic, said in an interview that issues with interference that had long gotten amateur radio operators in a bind have been smoothed out. Now the challenge, he said, is consumer awareness. (from Information Week)