• by Shankar Gupta , Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, July 8, 2005

Search giant Google, has teamed with publisher Hearst Corp. and financial institution Goldman, Sachs & Co., to back a promising new means of distributing broadband Internet connections that could radically change the way people -- and even electronic devices -- send and receive data.

The unusual alliance has made a nearly $100 million investment in Current Communications Group (CCG), a company that is developing broadband services over electrical power lines, according to a report in Thursday's edition of The Wall Street Journal.

The Federal Communications Commission authorized broadband over power line services early this year, and CCG is one of the first players to exploit the concept, which has the potential to deliver high-speed, two-way broadband connections through regular electrical outlets, with no extra special equipment.

The technology may still be below the radar screen of many traditional media companies, but during a panel discussion at the American Association of Advertising Agencies' Media Conference and Trade Show in New Orleans in March, the FCC's top technologist, Edmond J. Thomas, said it has the potential to revolutionize not jus access to the Internet, but the ability to transmit data to conventional electronic devices, making even dumb appliances smart media outlets.

"When and if that goes in, it allows data providers when and where there is an electrical pole," explained Thomas, adding, "Anything that consumes electricity can have an idea."

Thomas alluded to potential applications, including the apocryphal example of a refrigerator that would sense when it is running low on food supplies and could automatically search and order grocery products to replenish itself.

Such potential makes it clear why a search player like Google would want to develop the market. Google has already begun developing applications that extend online search beyond its homepage to computer desktops and wireless communications devices. Although it is known as a Web search engine, the first line of Google's own mission statement reads: "...to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful," noted a Madison Avenue executive familiar with the company's plans.

Why Hearst would get involved with the new technology may be less clear, but the implications for ubiquitous access to media content at any electrical junction would seem to have implications for any content provider.

Although Broadband over Power Line isn't yet widely available, Current Communications provides broadband service in Ohio and Northern Kentucky through a partnership with Cinergy Corp., a Cincinnati-based utilities company.

Current Communications' latest round of financing also included investments from two older investors--Liberty Media Corporation and the Berkman Family.