The European Commission has decided to promote as much as possible the grid type networks; the interest is not focused towards advanced computing solutions, but on electricity networks.

The Commission will start a program which aims to convince the 25 states to closely analyze the possibility of providing broadband Internet services using the existing electricity networks. Hence, a new market will make its appearance, the offer being very tempting to users who are still waiting for solution that gives them access to broadband Internet.

The European Union is hoping the liberalization of this market will make electricity and broadband grids more attractive to companies and will encourage already active Internet suppliers to use the available infrastructure and offer a new type of Internet connection. For now, the European Union has decided to convince the countries to eliminate any legislative obstacle which could block the development of this market.

If this solution pays off, Europe will benefit from a huge spreading of broadband support which will be materialized through over 200 million power lines that connect residential areas, schools and industrial areas within the European Union.

Unfortunately, for now, supplying broadband services through the network of power lines is an extremely rare phenomenon, 80 small scale projects being currently active. The specialists estimate that broadband through the power lines is a solution mature enough to threat the other broadband technologies and the growth rate of this service will increase with 86% within the next seven years. The Research and Markets analysis company has announced that in 2004, the market for this type of service was appraised at 57.1 million USD.