Because no electrical reconfiguring or rewiring is necessary, networking can be delivered to remote areas of a house without expensive and inconvenient drilling and cable-laying.

ENGADGET: Cisco unveils Linksys HomePlug AV Powerline solutions, converts outlets into network connection points

Starting in the 1990s, telecommunications companies spent billions of dollars laying fiber-optic cable all over the country.

NPR: Broadening the Reach of Broadband

Dozens of companies are laying fiber-optic cable around the world, leading some to talk of a looming bandwidth glut.

FORBES: A fiber niche is nice

The business of laying fibre-optic cable, both terrestrially and under the sea, used to be the preserve of incumbent telecoms operators sharing the burden of capital-intensive projects.

ECONOMIST: Booms and busts

Since 1997, Telkom has cut the time it takes to repair faults, reduced international charges by 50% in real terms, and started laying a massive undersea fibre-optic cable to carry data between Africa and Europe.

ECONOMIST: Telkom, the state telecoms monopoly, still has much to do

You can regard all this as laying it on a bit thick - nobody ever mistook Mr Cable for a ray of sunshine - or unvarnished economic realism.

BBC: UK Politics