However, without the need to install cabling, De Livera said a building can be BPL networked for 40 percent of the cost of a traditional Ethernet LAN.

Managing director of research firm BuddeComm, Paul Budde, said BPL providers will target the business market because "that's where the money is" and the alternative broadband potential is around 10 percent of the total market.

Managing director of BPL service provider Savant Corporation, Meyer Mussry, said BPL is basically a last-mile access technology which means it's "a piece of cake" to get it into a high-rise building.

"80Mbps is quite a lot of bandwidth to supply a number of offices, and in high-rises you have transformers in the building so you can deliver 80Mbps to each segment," Mussry said.

In the wake of Telstra's decision to scrap it proposed fiber to the node network, Mussry said enterprise BPL delivered by energy companies has an opportunity to break the last-mile monopoly, particularly in regional areas.