DirecTV tries for 'triple play'.

Plugging into high-speed Interact may soon be as easy as, well, plugging in.

DirecTV Group Inc. is lending its name and putting its marketing muscle behind a deal to make broadband Internet available through electrical outlets.

The nation's largest satellite TV provider is partnering with Current Group, a Germantown, Md.-based leader in broadband-over-powerlines technology, to roll out the service in the Dallas area this year. It will be available to nearly 2 million people.

DirecTV will bundle the new high-speed Internet offering with voice-over-Interact-protocol telephone service and its standard satellite TV offerings all in one package--often referred to as the "Triple Play" by cable and phone companies.

"This is our answer to cable's triple play," said Evan Grayer, vice president of broadband for the El Segundo satellite TV provider. "The Internet speeds are very comparable and often superior to cable speeds. Essentially, wherever there's a plug, there could be a high-speed Internet connection."

Users connect to the Internet with a device about the size of a cell phone that acts as a modem and can be adapted to serve as a wireless modem. The hardware will be developed and supplied by Current.

The BPL technology was greeted with high hopes when it was green-lighted more than four years ago by Federal Communications Commission officials for commercial deployment. It was seen as a way to increase competition and lower prices for broadband access but so far has failed to live up to the hype.

The technology has faced several hurdles in a mass-roll out, the largest of them being the need for the cooperation with the highly-regulated and often slow-moving power utilities, which are exploring offering the technology themselves. There also is concern over "signal leakage," which can interfere with certain communication frequencies used by police and other fast responders to emergencies.

Steve Mather, an analyst with SMH Capital, said though the technology has promise, it's unclear whether it ever will pose significant competition to broadband offerings by cable and telephone companies.

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"This is far from a billion-dollar bet by DirecTV," Mather said. "It's more a case of them exploring and poking around to see if anything will stick. We'll just have to wait and see how it pans out."

Analysts also see the move as a push by Google Inc., which joined with Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Hearst Corp. two years ago in putting an estimated $100 million into Current, to gain access to customers other than through phone and cable companies. Google has argued that phone companies have excessive control over its customers' access to the Internet.