After decades of ups and downs, China's power communication network has begun to take shape. Through satellite, microwave, carrier wave, optical cable and other communication means, a three-dimensional cross communication network with Beijing as the center and covering 30 provinces (cities, districts) has been formed. The development of China's electric power communication, from scratch, from small to large, from simple technology to today's advanced technology, from relatively single communication cable and power line carrier communication means to the combination of optical fiber, digital microwave, satellite and other communication means, from the local point-and-line communication mode to the trunk communication network covering the whole country and the national telephone network, mobile telephone network and digital data network mainly based on program-controlled switches, all show brilliant achievements in the development of electric power communication. With the improvement of the communication industry's role in social development, the services based on power communication network are no longer just the original program-controlled voice networking, information transmission control and other narrow-band services all the time, but gradually developed to simultaneously carry a variety of data services such as customer service center, marketing system, geographic information system (GIS), human resource management system, office automation system (OA), video conference, IP telephone and so on. Power communication has played its due role in coordinating the joint operation of power generation, transmission, substation, distribution and power consumption in the power system, ensuring the safe, economic, stable and reliable operation of the power grid, and better ensuring the communication requirements of power production, infrastructure, administration, flood control, power dispatching, reservoir dispatching, fuel dispatching, relay protection, safety automatic device, telecontrol, computer communication and power grid dispatching automation. Although the economic benefits of power communication itself can not be directly reflected for the time being, the economic benefits it generates and implies in power production and management are enormous. At the same time, electric power communication has attracted more and more attention from the society because of its unique development advantages:

(1) The 35kV and above transmission lines with a distance of nearly 670,000km are excellent resources for setting up special power optical cables, which are economical, fast, safe and reliable.

(2) Cables, pipelines and telephone poles all over the country are excellent resources for building optical fiber access networks;

(3) The increasingly mature power line communication (PLC) technology provides the first choice for users to access;

(4) Other technologies with power characteristics, such as passive optical fiber access, wireless broadband and multipoint spread spectrum system, make full and effective use of power resources.