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

The more the merrier...

[chill]

If they can actually deliver on what they promise, it will be interesting. With DSL vendors folding left and right, cable seems to have a clear path to domination. It will be good to see some competition.

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

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.

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

[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....

Realy?

[kruczkowski]

I live in Germany and all I can tell you that German Telecom would not like that! They are pushing DSL here like crazy. They discontiued flat-rate for ISDN and POTS, so if you want flat rate you have to get T-DSL. No other companys offer flat rate.

What German Util company are you talking about. I would like to order it!

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.

What about CA with its power crisis?

[antdude]

Assuming California is in a heat wave and the power reserve is small, then how will this high-speed Internet access supposed to work during a rolling black out? I assume both Internet access and electricity would go out. Double whammies. :(

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.

That's kinda dumb

[gvonk]

What good would internet access be without power, dude?

some actual links...

[Kraft]

Hmm... no links in the news? Dodgy, if you ask me...

Germany:
Provider: RWE
- Power line internet access launched by Germany's RWE - Quote: "The power line technology will mean that RWE PowerNet can deliver data at a rate of two million bytes per second."
- Shocking Concept: Internet Over Electrical Lines

Sweden:
Provider: Sydkraft Bredbånd - provides up to 8mbit/s downstream.
- Sweden Using Electricity For High-Speed Connections

continue list at will. I just know it will take forever before I can get anything but forced AOL crap connections where I live in France :(

Not as great as /. makes out

[anticypher]

There are two companies who have announced plans to offer internet over power lines, and only one has received a license and started a very limited offering in one city only (Essen). I think the link is www.rwe-powerline.de.

The service is quite limited. In order for a neighborhood to get access, they have to wait until the company wires up the local substation. There can be no transformers between the substation and the house. Once a neighborhood has access, a technician comes out and installs a box at the meter junction, and then connects the modem to an internal power socket. The powerline modems communicate with the box outside, which in turn communicates with the router at the substation, and everything after that is normal internet. There is no communication across most of the power system, the signals can't pass transformers or switching stations. The signals have an effective limit of 350 meters, which is much shorter than DSL or cable.

The 2Mbps limit is for an entire neighborhood, and is shared by all the other connections in the area. There is a cap at 250Mb per month, sometime later they will offer a 10Gb cap, but only to businesses and at a rate equal to leased line. The companies both are targeting high-density cities, and have no plans to offer this to any rural areas or small towns, because of the 350 meter limit on distance from substation to home.

For the trials last year, the modems had only a serial connection, and had to be "dialed" just like a regular analog modem, and the speed was limited to 115kbps. Their website claims they now have ethernet and USB connections as well. The last I saw, every customer gets a private 10.0.0.0 IP address, and the company doesn't allow servers of any kind.

The truly sad thing is, in Germany this really is competition and an improvement for the market.

the AC
[kann jemand in Essen post einen Kommentar über den Service?]

Re:Not as great as /. makes out

[psych031337]

First of, I am not in Essen nor am I a potential customer of rwe-powerline.

Then again, nothing could interest me less, because our local power company (RWE is kind of a german-wide conglomerate) has taken their time to actually rewire out city (Norderstedt, near Hamburg, >50.000 inhabitants) to turn it into a multimedia-city. Here is their story.

As much as I hate big fuzzy terms, I love well-provided service at cheap rates. That is what I am getting right now. The german Telekom is busting lawsuits at these guys for some time now, so you gotta know the service *must* be good. Wilhelm-tel got me hooked up within 4(!) working days after applying for service. I could take my old number from the Telekom phone line. I got a Motorola cable modem *free* of charge along with a NIC to ram into my machine and connect the cablemodem to. I have free phone service for local calls within the wilhelm-tel net. When testing the pipe i got bursts of up to 20 (!) Megabits (before the cablemodem throttled down) showing me that the net is not designed tight but redundant. At max. 8 people are connected to a 20MBit circuit, so with everyone surfing like mad, you still get the 2MBit you pay for at minimum. Nothing the Telekom could offer.

But first things first. wilhelm-tel (www.wilhelm-tel.de), our local power provider established a glass fibre backbone around Norderstedt and is currently wiring up individual households. Which means that you get a new wall plug for your tv connection. On this plug there is another connector which plugs in a Motorola cable modem and later even the set top box (they're planning to deliver digital tv later on) and a new phone jack. I had the opportunity to change my provider for phone over to wilhelm-tel which i gladly did. It has been a dream of mine to stop giving money to the Telekom monopoly for a long time. Now it's true.

Telekom is pushing DSL like mad everywhere (768down/128up). What they don't mention is the fact that out of a "userbase" of 400.000 customers, only 150.000 are already connected. The dirty rest (mostly individuals, not businesses) are waiting, some for more than 2 years by now. Their DSL flatrate also requires you to rent ISDN phone service and therefore all in all becomes a pricey thing. Overall it is a pretty scam, as people around here in Norderstedt have been waiting for DSL a very long time. After changing to wilhelm-tel they all (including me, who had not signed up for DSL but only cancelled his usual phone service) got called by Telekom reps trying to persuade us to get DSL instead of this lame 2MBit up/down wilhelm-tel with free local calls and all that. Asked if they had a better offer they said DSL could be up and running at normal rates for you in 2 weeks. AHH! ALl of sudden there is availability in my area. Strange. Smells like fear of competition.

Let's take a look at the rwe-powerline offer...

http://www.europemedia.net/shownews.asp?ArticleI D= 4306 says:

power line technology will mean that RWE PowerNet can deliver data at a rate of two million bytes per second.

Outright wrong, they offer two million BITS a sec.

Then you have to choose a service with RWE, which is basically a volume-cap thing. Go for 250, 1000 or 2000 megabytes a month and pay whatever you exceed with 7, 3.5 or 2 cents per MEGABYTE. This stinks of rip-off to me. Your monthly base price is $25, $35 or $50 depending on the tariff you sign up for. It also requires a one-time setup fee of roughly $50 and the modem has to be bought for $178, $152 or $127 (again depending on tariff).

What we have here is a monopolist (RWE=power) trying to get into another monopoly structure. Wilhelm-tel offers their service for $25 flat (including an undisclosed traffic amount for "fair private use", but my 10-15GB a month have not stirred anything there). You rent the modem for just 5 Marks ($2,50). No setup fees. Âlso, I can cancel anytime. RWE requires you to close a contract for 12 months, or 24 months if you want to save the one-time setup fee.

All the prices and conditions were taken from http://www.rwe-powerline.de/relaunch/preise/preise .htm and rudely converted to US-dollars to interest even the US-centric slashdotters.

To sum it up: RWE is a step somewhere but not quite the CORRECT direction. Most hardcore surfers in the area will be glad to get it. But wilhelm-tel is cheap and good enough to even interest the "unwashed masses" for broadband.

Now, you go to your local service provider and tell him to sink some glassfibre when he digs out the water pipes for checkup next time. That is basically what wilhelm-tel did in order to minimize infrastructure costs.

Re:Let's hope so...

[zsazsa]

Did I mention also that I live less than two miles from the State U. and the local "Technology Corridor"? Blarg.

Simple - see if you have line-of-sight to a dorm building and pay some kid in the dorms (with beer, money, whatever) to piggyback an 802.11b connection on his/her nice and fast ethernet connection.

Ian