It was with disbelief and dismay that I read of proposals to send internet data over electricity power lines (15 January, p 26).

For over a century, radio engineers have increased the sensitivity of high-frequency radio receivers by many orders of magnitude, allowing communication worldwide using transmitter powers of only hundreds of watts.

The HF spectrum from 3 to 30 MHz is potentially capable of allowing something of the order of 10,000 short-wave speech channels in each continent of the Earth. Any imaginable tsunami warning system would certainly need to use that spectrum.

During the past 50 years, communication engineers have designed more and more subtle methods of modulation to make the best use of this spectrum. During the same half century, electronic engineers have worked assiduously to design ways of preventing equipment from interfering with that spectrum.

Now, for a quick buck and no more than a very temporary and partial solution to the desire for internet facilities in homes, some groups of ecologically ignorant or careless financiers are proposing to undo all that progress by squirting significant and very poorly controlled radio interference throughout the HF spectrum and all over continents.

It is not as if there are no alternatives. There are plenty, all offering better communication, without causing anywhere near such dreadful problems of interference.

If you would like to reuse any content from New Scientist, either in print or online, please contact the syndication department first for permission. New Scientist does not own rights to photos, but there are a variety of licensing options available for use of articles and graphics we own the copyright to.