The Commission E Open Meetings papers are a choice between a status report for the Working Group activity or a short presentation of a subject in the area of the respective WG, which seems more relevant for the period between two such Open Meetings. The distribution system power line carrier problem discussed in this short review paper is far from being solved. On the contrary one could say that it has just been put forward and that it will represent a research item for the next few years. It is however typical for the new trend in which power and information technology are closely related. A session dedicated to this item is organized by the Wroclaw EMC 2000 symposium