Ethernet Via Electric Conduits

windows bios world writes "From a CNet article NYC businesses will be able to get internet access via ethernet routed through electrical conduits from a subsidiary of Con Edison. CEC is targeting business customers and telecommunications carriers with its PowerLan Ethernet services as part of a larger strategy to become the premier provider of high-bandwidth transport services for New York." Interesting that a non-telecommunications firm can parley a single asset (right-of-way in existing conduits in the crowded tunnels under Manhattan) into a business.

Comments

Remember Sprint?

[cperciva]

Interesting that a non-telecommunications firm can parley a single asset (right-of-way in existing conduits in the crowded tunnels under Manhattan) into a business.

Sprint was created when the Southern Pacific Railway realized that they could take advantage of their railway rights-of-way to lay fiber-optic cable.

Re:Remember Sprint?

[elfkicker]

According to Qwest's FAQ, they were started in the same way.

How long has Qwest been in business?
In 1988, Southern Pacific Telecom was established as a subsidiary of Southern Pacific Railroad to lay telecom cable. This subsidiary was purchased by The Anschutz Company. The company began offering limited long distance services in 1991, changed its name to Qwest Communications in 1995, and incorporated in 1996 when it began construction of the Qwest Macro Capacity Fiber Network. Joe Nacchio was appointed CEO in January 1997 and Qwest made its Initial Public Offering in June 1997.

Is this some kind of sham that the railroad execs pull everytime they gets a subsidy to build out new lines? Can anyone shed more light on the history of this? Or is this just misinformation. Sprint's history page make no mention of Southern Pacific, and dates itself back to a 1899 as a telephone and utilities upstart.

Re:Remember Sprint?

[jrp2]

Sprint was used for internal communications until 1968, when the FCC (Carter Phone Decision) allowed alternative to the Bell system. After that they parlayed it into a business.

Actually, the CarterPhone decision related to connecting 3rd party (not leased from the telco) telephones and equipment to your phone line. It was instrumental in allowing things like modems. More info on CarterPhone (and a real cool telco history page) here.

It did not relate to Long Distance at all, that was more related to Judge Green's decision to break up AT&T. Sprint did not enter the LD market until the 80s, with details here. You are correct about the internal communications part though (I know IBM used them for inter-office comms in the 70s).

sewer lines too

[studarus]

Reminds me of another project where they installed fiber optic cable through sewer lines so they didn't have to tear up the streets. They are at City Net. I wonder what is next? Power through my cable tv line?

What do You expect it to be?

[Taliban Lecher]

In Germany we have this "ready to go" and "coming the next couple months" for several years now. It is called Powerline. Due to recent rumours you still get little offs for starting e.g. a vacuum cleaner (not that I need Internet access for cleaning the house) and you are limited in the possibilities when connecting your whole appartment complex. Given that the very big company promoting it, namely RWE, considers cannelling it altogether.

Now combine this with what DSL in Germany is, mainly by the ex monopolist. We had impulse dialling phones here for a very long time (and some old people still have). They can disturb DSL traffic going over a phone line, even if as far away as "the same building" (according to Telekom Inc.). So they give you DSL lines with Interleaving and you end up with ping times of at least 60 ms.

Expect ping times of that network there to be higher.

So, slashdotters, many of You are gamers. You will lose on that line. Sad to say it out loud, but You will all die in RTCW et. al. and your only help will be: look outside your windows and remember what you see. Its name is "Ground Zero". This is New York and starting there is not the most patriotic way of launching this service if you expect gamers (as early adopters) to hop on.

Also available in Turku, Finland

[Johku]

Turku Energia (a local energy company in Finland) also announced (link in Finnish) a similar product couple of days ago.

They are offering a 1.125 Mbps Internet access and they are planning for a product including a telephone line (VoIP), electricity and broadband Internet access all from a single electricity outlet. The service would also make it possible to introduce LANs into old buildings without installing any cables.

In the testing phase they had some problems with interference but they report those problems being solved now.

It has been already tried in Germany, too

[CharonX]

LAN/Internet via the powerlines has alreay been tried in Germany, in the Ruhr-Gebiet to be specivic (for non Germans: Ruhr-Gebiet = area in Germany where lots of big cities are REALLY close to each other), too.
Unfortunately it didnt seem to work out that well, they had tons of problems with interferences in the lines (limiting bandwith and causing total network failurse every few weeks) and that the bandwith per user slowly dwindled into 56k areas since too many people signed up for the field test (and I dont even want to mention ping times here, gamers stay away!)
To cut a long story short, even though the German Telekom dominated the internet sector with their crappy and expensive service and people were looking for alternatives, the field test for powerline from the electicity companies failed and was ended last month... :(

This is not ethernet over power lines

[Anonymous Coward]

This is simply using the conduit (the containers of electrical wires) to house network cables.

Their advantage is that they have existing right of way all over the city and they have spare room to lay in new cables (new fiber or copper).

Re:back in the mid-80s...

[jdcook]

It's Empire City Subway, a subsidiary of what is now Verizon.

Also Williams

[TheSync]

Williams Communications was a gas and petroleum pipeline company with 100,000 miles of right-of-way. In 1985, they started putting fiber in decommissioned pipelines.

They now have the "largest fully-lit, U.S. next-generation network with local-to-global connectivity, linking 125 cities and reaching five continents."