PLC stands for Power Line Communications and it is a way to communicate via power lines. This is a great thing since existing power lines can be used hence no additional fixed cabling and no wireless is necessary. However, there are some bandwidth and range constraints. The new IEEE 1901.1 standard that is now backed by Huawei promises to support bandwidths of up to 4 Mbit/s and range of around 1 km (bigger range can be achieved using repeaters). There are quite a lot of interesting use cases for this PLC-IoT solution including Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI), smart metering solution, smart power distribution solution, medium- and low-voltage switchgear solution, navigation-aiding light solution, and traffic signal light solution. More about the news can be found here.
