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Hams Complain about Powerline Broadband
dwm writes "Think
broadband over power lines (BPL) would be wonderful? There might be some collateral damage. The American Radio Relay League (your friendly neighborhood ham radio operators) have documented dramatic HF radio interference in areas where BPL is being tested (Check out the video of actual interference)."
How many people still rely on ham radio? Why havent they moved over to something a little more modern? Does ham radio have any advantages over current technology?
by the amateur radio community is that this internet signal is transmitted through the electrical lines at frequencies from 2Mhz to 80Mhz - 80 through 6 meters. Studies have shown that, at the power levels suggested by the power companies along with the transmission lines acting like very large antennas, the typical amateur operator with have an estimated 33.7db to 65.4db of additional ambient noise to contend with, and would obviously ruin ham radio.
Would it be a huge problem for Slashdot to download the video first and then put up a bittorrent link for the file? Really -- any video link posted in a story immediately goes down due to mega-traffic.
Thoughts?
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
Well yes. If this BPL stuff is causing harmful interference, I will not 100% be for the use of it - Partly because I am a ham op myself.
That said, BPL does seem like a promising technology. This way, the electrical utlity can also sell internet, allowing the consumer to benefit from market competition.
For me, I see HAM radio's biggest benefit to society being when disasters strike and nothing works (phone, cell phone, etc) HAM ops are able to get communication going and assist emergency response efforts.
Now, if this BPL is causing HF interference, thats OK! after all, in the event of an emergency and the power is out, NO HF noise caused by BPL!
-Grump.
Is it true that more people vote for the winner of American Idol, than vote for the president? -Ali G.
Of course, it is largely isolated from the main Internet, since there are a lot of restrictions as to what can be done with Amateur Radio (no commercial use, no swearing, etc.) as opposed to the Internet at large.
Have the proponents of BPL considered that it may be a violation of international treaties governing the use and allocation of the RF spectrum? If I want to put an HF transmitter on the air, I must obtain a license from my country's radio administration, who in turn is required to follow international treaties that say what frequencies and emission types are available for specific classes of users. There are bands reserved for broadcasting, ships, aircraft, amateur radio, etc.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
I don't want to sound troll. But this thing (ethernet over power lines) has been freaking out ham radio operators all over the world for quite some time. Look for example here [eham.net]. And based on the law "if the shit can happen it certainly will" this will bring EMI problems to all equipment that is connected to or in the vicinty of the jack in the wall. Your TVs your stereos your computers etc.
Besides have anybody of had to deal with power companies? Do you really want THEM to provide your internet connection? Or even being involved in providing one.
Time and time again it returns (and will keep returning) to the simple truth. You need an adequate infrastructure to provide high speed Internet.
In the beginning of DSL I kept hearing a lot of strange things going against physics. Such as UTP (unshielded twisted pair) is better than coaxial cable etc. Well guess what, being entirely untrue this is not the end of the story. The pair that runs the phone line in your home/appartment is not even twisted, its flat (and it's CAT 3 most of the time to the central office).
It took huge amount of money to put power lines, phone lines and CATV into every home. And the companies that were doing that were cutting costs like crazy. Which means that nobody ever thought that someday it will be used for something else besides its initial purpose. And again based on the law I mentioned in the beginning it will be probably the worst case scenario for anytiing else. In case of DSLs that certainly is crosstalk and EMI and also distance. For example in my case no DSL provider does even want to install it for me citing that I am too far from central office.
Personally I think the interrim winners of all this will be the cable companies. Just because the people who decided to get broadband internet access usually go all the way once they've set to have it. Most people I know who started with DSL eventually just switch to cable modems. But eventually every body will lose because again CATV was not intended for anything else. (Just an example untill recently CATV equipment manufacturers were refusing to use multilayered PCBs because it was "too expensive"). So this is it. People just keep their heads in the body cavities of their choice and keep selling each other a snake oil.
On the other hand. It would be actually nice (especially with current situation in tech sector of economy) if we'd start laying fiber to the home and/or build sane infrastructure for wireless access.
Just my $0.02
- Back off man. I am a scientist
There is a lot more in the affected bandwidth than ham radio. The hams are just the most vocal group to oppose BPL.
There is worldwide shortwave broadcast, citizen's band, government and land-mobile radio, too, including police and fire dispatch (although a lot of that has moved up to VHF higher, there is still a lot on "low band"), cordless telephones and baby monitors, television channels 2-6, etc.
So it's not just hams that will lose out if this technology is deployed. Shortwave listeners, public safety communications, other land mobile (there are a lot of utilities using these frequencies) and pepole receiving television off antennas will all find their communcations disrupted.
Not to mention the technical problems of distributing RF over a very-low-frequency network.
This is a bad idea, poorly implemented. Like a nuclear powered airplane with an air-shielded reactor. An idea who's time will never come.
there are 3 kinds of people:
* those who can count
* those who can't
I have a license, KC5LHH. And while hams aren't at the forefront, neither is the emergency broadcast service. Hams train themselves to provide a worldwide communications network under the *worst* possible conditions. And while BPL would do much to harm broadcasts, I do think that proper power supply filtering and construction can greatly reduce/eliminate the problem. Just don't count em out. In the event of a disaster as trivial as a hurricane/earthquake, they are quite useful. And one day when some conventional/nuclear war takes place or aliens invade, you might owe them your life.
Why can't all fpga/microcontroller manufacturers just release free optimizing compilers???
After making wait him while I unpacked everything I needed to make my radios work we conducted some test and he was finally convinced I was not the cause of the interference. Even telling him that the radio gear was not even capable of being used at the time was not enough for him to think that someone/something else was to blame.
People resent being blamed for something that was not their fault even when the blame continues after his has been shown there is no way it could have been them.
That's great that if the power is out, the interference would be gone, but why would the HAM operators all over the country still be operating, if 99.999% of the time, they were drowned out by interference, they'd all be gone.