High-speed Internet Access: Power Lines For Real

securitas writes "ID reports that German utilities started offering high speed Internet access via power lines last month, and Sweden and the Netherlands are not far behind. The companies claim to have resolved problems of interference and line noise. US trials are taking place in secret with Reston VA based PowerLine Technologies. Nortel and Siemens abandoned the technology in 1999 but if this is for real DSL and cable may have a new competitor."

Comments

I'm not so sure about this

[sourcehunter]

I'm not sure whether to be happy or worried.

We all know that our "Friends" at the power company are as good of a monopoly as we could possibly ever know - perhaps even better than the phone/telco monopolies because deregulation occurs at the city/state level instead of at the national level with FCC Regulation....

So... We go from the hands of one monopoly (Cable) to another monopoly (Phone) to yet a third monopoly (Power).

I'm not sure which devil is going to be better.

For areas with limited telco/cable service, this may be the monopoly - and we know how the energy companies are on rates...

Another question - will this be handled as well as power in California? I hope not...

Re:I'm not so sure about this

[dozing]

I see this as a blessing. Like many out there I've been waiting for an eternity for broadband. The cable company is finally (started last week) laying the fiber optic in my area for my broadband (DSL is only a dream where I live.) So of course the cable company could charge me whatever they like for broadband (don't tell them but I'd gladly pay out the wazoo for this promised land.) If the power company could start offering me broadband then there might be a little price war.

You are right in that the cable company and the power company are both monopolies. But, they are only monopolies in the power and cable TV area. The more monopolistic companies we have offering broadband the smaller the broadband monopoly becomes.

(I hope that made sense to sombody because I really need a nap)

Re:I'm not so sure about this

[Amanset]

I don't understand your point. Yes, Cable is a monopoly for cable TV, phone is a monopoly for telephones and power is a monopoly for, well, power. However, as long as you have at least two of these in your area neither is a monopoly for high-speed internet access. You suddenly have competition.

Take my example here in Stockholm, Sweden. I can get broadband either via cable or ADSL. Suddenly there is no monopoly, I can make a choice depending on service. Do I want Telia, who seem to be a bit open to running servers on my ADSL, or do I want UPC, who will let me have 5 IP addresses and a slightly higher download speed for more-or-less the same money?

My opinion of this is that as the three utilities are monopolies they have a reasonably sure financial backing, so they are not goign to go under tomorrow, but to get my extra bradband cash they need to offer something I want, making them mor einteresting than the competitor.

Re:I'm not so sure about this

[EvilJohn]

Or you could move 751 feet towards the DSL CO....

Re:The more the merrier...

[Jace of Fuse!]

Of course, it'll be interesting to see the first guy who "wires" his own house get fried.

Now that you put it that way, I hope AOL wastes no time offering this service to the masses.

Local Telecommunications Infrastructure

[ryanisflyboy]

Recently a hotly debated topic in my community has been the idea the city should get involved in providing telecommunications services. The proposed plan would mean stringing up miles of fiber all over the city to provide high-speed Internet access to businesses and residential customers. It's this type of technology that makes me so opposed to the idea. If the city could use existing low voltage power lines to transmit data the costs of starting up such a venture would be significantly reduced.

Still, what would be the life expectancy of this technology? It seems cable and DSL have such a lead in the market it would be hard for power companies to really become competitive. With the emergence of new wireless technologies that have the potential to out perform DSL and cable it seems power line data transmission won't last long on the open market.

Additionally, how would a power failure effect service? I have a UPS on my system at home so when the power goes out I still have access via modem or even cable service to my servers at work. With power failures that last more than 20 minutes I'm able to log in and shutdown everything safely before the UPS's at work fail. If I were unable to log on because a power failure also effected my Internet access I wouldn't be very pleased. It seems like electrical storms could cause significant interference as well - as all power lines are unshielded (as far as I know). I'm sure there must be some electronic component that keeps power surges from frying your "power line modem" out (another potential problem). So it seems to me there are still some bugs to work out. Only time will tell.

For now I'm going to stick with cable and wait for high-speed wireless to hit the street.

Re:Competition?

[mark-t]

Will a power outage affect it?

Although the issue of whether or not a power outage will affect it may be of concern to a certain type of person (read: die-hard techno-geek computer junkie), considering that most people run their computers off of the power line coming into their house anyways (laptops notwithstanding), having the internet connection die at the same time as the whole power goes out doesn't seem like such a bad deal to me.

Deadborn - why?

[Thor Ablestar]

I believe the project is born dead. Let me explain why.

I believe the signal bandwidth as well as it's transmission distance corresponds to the group of 3-5 standard Soviet-era buildings, 80 apartments each. The single transformer serves this group - and also insulates the group from the 10-kV backbone network. It means that we either should place the routers on each transformer - or the capacitor bridges will passively route the data, overloading the network as a whole - or the groups will be insulated and still need a group router somewhere.Don't forget that all the equipment will be special (read: expensive due to limited production size).

Now let us consider the nearest competing technology - UTP Ethernet. You can easily buy routers, bridges, switches, cables, protectors and have no problems with mounting the cables between the buildings since there are usually NO roads between them; you can either throw the cable from roof to roof or use the existing phone tubes. You can use 802.11, leased lines or laser links as longlinks between networks. Such networks exist in post-Soviet territory and they work, mostly being supported by enthusiasts.

Moreover, now I take part in designing of time signals transmission system using the power lines, and I know that it's problematic to obtain the transmission speed comparable not even to Ethernet, but to V.32. The special chips I have access to have about 900 bits/sec. Anything giving the higher speeds will produce a lot of RFI, and it cannot be avoided.

Then, the second factor. Using the modem I can contact with any other modem; using the V.90 modem I have some troubles :-( having 56k with my friends; with DSL I cannot use the modem for anything except the Internet access. The same may be true for the electric networks, but not for Ethernet.

Since the power line modem cannot be used as a traditional modem ( 3-5 buildings zone - not more) it will be promoted by the ISP's in the monopoly way only.

So I believe the project will fail leaving a lot of expensive equipment on consumers' hands - as it has already been with some DSL companies. You have been warned.