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FEMA Opposes Broadband Over Powerlines
Curmudgeon Rick writes "According to eHam.net, the Federal Emergency Management Agency has put a submission to the FCC strongly opposing the use of powerlines for broadband distribution. The report can be found here [PDF link]. IMO, vendors should let powerline broadband die. They keep defibrillating it only because of the dollars they poured in; but it is and always was a dead duck." The submission concludes: "FEMA has concluded that introduction of unwanted interference from the implementation of BPL technology into the high frequency radio spectrum will result in significant detriment to the operation of FEMA [emergency] radio systems such as FNARS."
Well there are commerical ventures in the UK which are selling broadband over powerlines
news report
Rus
Cheap UK and US VPS
It was a strange and most likely unworkable technology but I was looking forward to having a 3rd industry in the broadband game.
Afterall, the HAM operators have been saying that the test markets for the current set of BPL services were generating RF trash that could interfere with various longwave services since they resided in the same spectrum. Since this is all Subpart 15 stuff, they're probably going to get told to lower the emissions to practically nothing or don't do it.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
This is sad, because there are still multitudes without regional access to DSL or cable. Satellite is expensive and still uses dial-up for upstream comm. And some of those who are still using dial-up have to deal with poor line quality and congestion. Power lines exist everywhere, and have the ability to bring high-speed access to a lot of people.
If my answers frighten you, stop asking scary questions.
Without looking into this too deeply, I believed that this was a great idea that only needed the proper amount of time to develop. Once again, it looks like I'm wrong. **** Look of astonishment on faces of all readers ****
Stay tuned for new sig...
I would have thought that the power lines themselves would generate much more interference than the data lines.
Pull the plug
/.
I mean, seriously. If there's all kinds of natural/unnatural disasters happening, let the Feds disconnect access until the crisis is stabilized.
Some people may complain about freedom of the press or censorship, or some other fool thing, but when a crisis is unfolding I'm much more interested in getting information from the radio, shortwave, or scanner than I am about reading
OK...
I can do this. I am, after all,
a superhero!
Why use powerlines when you can use pigeons?
I really am curious. I can see the logic behind opposing interference, but I was of the impression that broadband would be transmitted at a very different frequency. If they do the math right, the waves really shouldn't interfere with each other.
But I'm not as informed as I'd like to be. If they DON'T use powerlines (that's a lot of wasted money) what are our other options?
Damon,
http://actionPlant.com
BTW, despite the pages looking like it's a done deal, they've only trialled it in two towns to date and have no availability checker on their Web site, so I'm not expecting this to be rolled out to a wider UK audience for quite some time yet.
Oh, and the very obvious reason why this seeming dead duck is still being touted around is that rural UK users have neither cable nor ADSL. With satellite Internet being ludicrously expensive, this powerlines gubbins [if it works properly] might be the only way that those in the "country" can get broadband at a sensible price...
Its good that FEMA advises against BPL (especially in a technical explanation). If the energy companies get their hands in broadband service . . . uh oh, we may see one of the biggest monopolies in energy.
will be the day they pull the power cable from my hot frying dead hands.
If you post it, they will read.
ohh look at the pretty daisys. mummy where are you, i cant see you any more.
mummy ... sniff
Thats a good point.
However if you can only use your ham radio when the power is out, then why own one?
People won't want to own them if they can't use them. Then when the power goes out almost no one will have them.
Transmission conditions would be fine- but then you're talking about a transmitter with a lot of power compared to the BPL system. The transmitter might even jam the BPL system if it were working.
What they're worried about is reception. Over long distances, while the signals are detectable, they're really pretty weak comparatively speaking. The stuff that the BPL systems are generating are in the ballpark of the signal levels that might be detectable, so the signals from the BPL will be most likely the ones you detect.
So, you might be in a FEMA office, say like in Denton, Texas, where the power is on- but the emergency is in Corpus Christi or Brownsville. Power's out THERE because of a disaster- but the locally running BPL system's causing merry hob with your reception of the signal from that location.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Fnars?
:-o
Oh dear. Viz magazine has infected Slashdot!
(uh... appologies if you didn't get the joke - it's only going to be understood by the Brits...)
(Spudley Strikes Again!)
Looks like FEMA played the National Security Card. With all the things that have been said about BPL, this, I think is one of the most impressive reasons not to have BPL. But it does raise the question, in the event of an emergency which would require the use of the those frequencies, would the lines even be up? Then again, I can see that if it interfers with the Civil Air Patrol, it would be reason enough.
The views expressed are mine own and do not express the views of my employer.
HF radio is *the* communication medium for many life-critical situations. It is the only affordable communication line for many NGOs operating in third world countries, and HF equipment is much easier to setup and more rubust than satellite equipment.
Until now, the HF spectrum has been carefully regulated to avoid harmful interference. It is just not acceptable to sacrifice it simply to get a cheaper Internet access. There are a good set of broadband technologies available which almost do not interfere with HF users.
Let's hope politicians wait to notice it until a true emergency happens...
I'm a ham and have been very concerned about the reports of spectrum polution from Broadband over Powerlines. But if FEMA doesn't like it, maybe it's not so bad after all.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
I have a rural property that's too far from the switching office to get DSL, and they're not even thinking about running cable (but if they did, I'd have to pay ~$10,000 to run the cable from the property line to the house.) They're doing everything they can to discourage ISDN use (e.g. charging a $200 connection fee), and even POTS dial-up won't connect at better than 28.8. My viable choices for broadband are wireless or power line (I even have my own transformer). I wish they would hurry up and support one or the other. All the wireless broadband trials seemed to have concluded they couldn't make any money and have been discontinued. What are we supposed to do, all move to the city if we want decent internet access?
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
The RF spectrum is already heavily polluted, it would be nice to keep data transmissions off powerlines (each powerline acts as a huge antenna).
Seems to me that you can still use the powerline infrastructure a bit for providing Internet connectivity. Why not run your fiberoptics alongside the power t-lines?
Up here (Canadian north) there are some power utilities that are installing optical data lines on top of power lines anyway for the purpose of remote sensing & monitoring. Maybe a power utility could install extra fiberoptics while they're at it, use a small percent of the bandwidth for monitoring and sell the rest of the bandwidth to telecom for providing internet service?
It seems that FEMA only uses a limited set of frequencies. Why not install notch filters at select access points and design the broadband to only use the remaining bandwidth (either in frequency space or via notch-resistant error correction protocols in the physical layer). The same could be done for ham radio users -- bandpass filtering outside the traditional X-meter bands used by SW radio operators.
Broadband use of powerlines does not have to create a broadband noise source.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Aside from the service issues in rural communities and the express desire for more competition in the broadband market, why would anyone want broadband via power lines? Its not like we have reliable power in the United States when you factor in all the surges and spikes our household electrical equipment experience on a daily basis. Do the powerline "modems"/adapters have built in surge suppression? Are they made of metal? Because if not, if a major surge goes through your house, the adapter would melt the plastic and set fire to your house. After all, that is how Reggie Jackson lost his classic car collection. And if power lines lose 33% of the electricity that is transmitted, what does that translate to in terms of data loss? Perhaps if the power companies wish to increase their profits, they'd invest in better cabling so more efficient power transmission would occur.
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
Considering (US numbers) it takes about 776 miles of power line to make an efficient 1/4 wave 60Hz antenna and just 2.5 feet for 100MHz, it is fairly clear that adding high frequency content to the power lines can easily cause significant radiation.
Google is your friend...
No not really but then I know something about radio.
wireless broadband uses 2.4 or 5 Ghz. That is up in the microwave range. It will not interfere with the HF stuff the FEMA cares about.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Besides, how arogant can you be to think that hams should have their equipment sitting around useless because of lots of broadband over powerlines spectrum polution, not even be able to pratice using it or train new hams, and then expect that there will be no problem when there is a power and communication emergency just because the local broadband interference is now temporarly eliminated?
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Broadband over power cables interferes with FEMA's mind control satellite.
You're now entering aluminum foil hat territory.
There is a difference between the HomePlug home powerline LAN solutions for running in your house and running broadband from the power company to all homes connected to its lines to form a WAN.
-- Fighting mediocrity one bad post at a time.
IMO the telco's and cable providers are probably more worried about this than anyone and they've probably filled FEMA up with all kinds of bull about what it might do to fema's spectrum.
Of course the FCC should test anything and give it a license which means it cant interfere with anyone elses equipment and FEMA's equipment is supposed to accept any interference. Either way this story is moot and FEMA needs to get their own experts that are not paid by the opposition to formulate their own studies and opinions on the matter.
How do the people in one location know when to pull the plug? Also you have the local people mad when they loss their net access because of an emergncy, that they belive has no effect on them.
I could think about what people in a city in the US might say if they had their net access cut so that FEMA can take a call comming in from South America, the best solution is not to have people use something that would have to be pulled so that some one can recive a SOS.
Ok i live in upstate NY and two of the most recent events that would be needed for the emergency brodcast system (9/11, and the Black out this past summer) didn't use it !
...
Not once was it used durring either event ! so basicaly they should have no say, its an outdated system that is never used anymore.
Furthermore if there is such an emergency they could trip the broadband so it turns off so it won't disrupt their signal
In anycase horid decision making done by idiotitic buerocrats, to even make a statement like they are.
If this was a valid argument the FCC would be involved.
- MOSKIE
Wasn't the original and best argument about this the fact that, *in most cases* when HAMS were in use for emergency communication, the power was already out?
Amateurs need to maintain equipment and practice needed skills before a disaster occurs. If the equipment is unusable during regular times, what is the motivation even to buy equipment? Another thing to consider is that emergency stations need to be able to communicate out to areas that do have power.
Another issue to contend with is the propagation characteristics of the HF radio band which BPL is using. Interference could travel thousands of miles. I doubt anyone will want to track down interference a thousand miles away when a hurricane has just flattened their state.
Tired of being "punished" by the Slashdot $rtbl since 2002. I'm now over at http://soylentnews.org/ .
Of couse this is Pennsylvania, where we are all supposed to have already.
HPC for Primates. Read Cluster Monkey
It isn't about the WAN--it is about the size of the antenna. Think about it. Miles and miles of powerlines already make great antennas for all sorts of things that we wish they didn't pick up (WAER in Syracuse, NY, for instance--the transmitter is downtown in the university area). One can only imagine the havoc that having wide bandwidth signals spewing from such a large antenna would cause if it were done at high enough power levels to be useful. Hell, internet over plain cable TV lines does bad things to RF freespace spectrum that isn't allocated to the cable system as primary--due to poor installations. You think that the power distribution grid is any better? Ha! You can hear a 60Hz hum on many frequencies in many places in US due to leakage on the power lines. Imagine adding internet width spectra to that!
So, the question is not LAN/WAN--it is antenna size!
So when your farmhouse gets hit by a tornado, you don't mind that there will be no way of contacting the outside world? That the ham radio operator trying to raise the emergency coordination center is having his signal squashed by the BPL system?
"They redundantly repeated themselves over and over again incessantly without end ad infinitum" -- ibid.
Here or if that gets Slashdotted, here
Tired of being "punished" by the Slashdot $rtbl since 2002. I'm now over at http://soylentnews.org/ .
why doesn't putting a signal over a power line act like a big antenna?
It does. Thus we have a ubiquitous 60hz hum that every interference-sensitive hunk o' wires within 20 miles of a power line needs to waste time/space/energy to filtering that frequency out. An if the hunk 'o wires in question actually has the express purpose of looking in the 60hz range, good luck - It might take less effort to fly to Siberia than to filter out line noise yet allow a desired near-60hz target signal to pass.
(For those in the UK, change "60" to "50")
The best counter-argument to that is that there would be no ham radio operators if they couldn't use their equipment except for when the power's out. I mean, would you invest large amounts of time and money into getting equipment and certification for a hobby that you couldn't ever practice? Guess what -- no one else would either.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
I don't think so. IMHO, in case BPL would get accepted they'd just step aside and watch this thing to die and then they would take over the BPL customers.
Iterference would be a huge problem fo HAM operators and everybody who use HF/VHF. But the thing is interference goes both ways. So I think if deployed in wide area BPL would just really really suck. You power line infrastructure was just not built to be protected from interference. Any kind of it. Even people with DSL have problem with intereference. And that's CAT3 UTP (in most places).
So for telco and cable providers BPL will just awake an apetite of more people for broadband. If you ever had broadband (however bad it was) going back to dial-up is just painfull. Most of my firends who installed and had problems with DSL just switched to cable. I don't even remember anyone of them fireing up their dial-up modem ever again.
As far as I remember for a long time ARRL was the only voice oposing to BPL.
- Back off man. I am a scientist
The economics of rural service are very interesting. Right now everyone with a phone in the USA is paying to subsidize phone access to rural residents. It costs more money to service an area with a low populations density than an urban area. Fine, people need phones for safety reasons. Rural residents presumably subsidize services they don't need, like meth clinics.
It bothers me when people start talking about subsidizing rural internet access, though. El says that "they're not even thinking about running cable" near his house, and that he'd have to shell out 10K$ to connect to said cable, anyway. I'm curious: who does he think should bear these costs? Everyone in the US?
If people want to move to the middle of nowhere to get away from gangs, traffic, comedians, literacy, and culture, that's fine. It isn't reasonable to expect the same service level in the middle of nowhere that one enjoys in New York City, though. It's especially unreasonable to regard the acquisition of these services as a right. If you want to enjoy cheap services, then move to where it is cheap to provide those services. If you want to live in an area that is difficult and expensive to service, break out your wallet.
El isn't necessarily making this argument, he just reminded me of the people I had to deal with when I worked in the rural NW.
The most likely evolution of broadband is cellular broadband being implimented on a wide scale once the majority of the UHF spectrum goes back to the FCC (currently sometime in 2007...I think)...
The cellular companies will get a huge chunk of the old UHF spectrum, and most likely they will start going into the broadband ISP business. It only makes sense.
As mobile technology becomes the norm (more and more ppl are using laptops) they will demand wireless connectivity. This has the 2-fold benefit of bringing affordable broadband to rural areas (99% of rural areas have cellular coverage...your little handheld phone might not get a signal, but a stationary antenna would)...as well as always-connect broadband for mobile computing...
There's a new group of consumers that are just around the corner...these are the young kids (just getting into Jr. High right now) that have grown up with the internet and have never known a world without a computer with a global network connection. They are a lot like "geeks/nerds" in the way that they CRAVE information...they want to be connected 24/7 and they want it now!!! This isn't something that's going away and as soon as these kids start getting paychecks they're going to be driving the technology industry into new directions...
Ok, let's rephrase that then: wouldn't it make more sense to simply require broadband over powerline to not emit any significant energy in the HF spectrum?
And while we're at it, let's require that the laws of physics be re-written by Congress! You just don't understand what we're talking about. Power lines are great for low-frequency AC (60 Hz power), but inefficient for higher-frequency signals.
The proposed Broadband over Power Lines service would be a shared user of frequencies between 2 MHz and 80 MHz. Again, these frequencies wouldn't propagate as well over power lines, so they would be sent at high power levels. Much of their energy would be lost in the transmission from the upstream connector to your home -- i.e. radiated out the miles-long antenna formed by the power line! Simply put, you CANNOT have non-interfering BPL if it uses the 2-80 MHz spectrum. Period.
FEMA and other governmental users' radios are scattered between typically 2 and 50 MHz in different sub-bands that are used depending on the time of day, how active the ionosphere is and the overall path of intended communications. Ditto for fixed services, land-mobile, aeronautical and marine services, beacons, short wave broadcasters and amateurs.
The problem is two fold:
1) anybody trying to receive a signal between about 2 and 80 MHz would be unable to do so.
2) Legally-licensed transmitters in that range would cause untold interferance to these "Part 15" devices. Part 15 means they can't legally cause interferance and must live with any interferance they get. Aunt Millie's not going to be happy when her cordless phone is rendered useless by broadband and Uncle Phil will be pissed when he can't surf porn because the clean and licensed 1000 Watt transmitter up the block is on the air.
This has to be killed and killed NOW.
Cheers, Peter, W2IRT
The Boss (to Wally):
Our competitors found a way to send broadband internet traffic over the power grid.
The Boss (to Wally):
I want to you find a way to send data over the sewer system.
Wally (thinking):
I thought i was already doing it.
----------
Btw, i am curious. If only the text is reproduced (like i just did), is it a violation of the copyright? What if i told this to somebody?
OK, you're an A.C. and you're stupid; I'll type this very slowly so maybe you can follow it....
As I said above, the HF bands are used in an emergency to reach areas that do have power. They may be used to relay information about the safety of people in the affected area, they may be used to request life saving medical supplies, or to summon other emergence service providers to the affected area and let them know what to expect and what they need to bring when they come. If the areas they are trying to contact that do have power can't receive a ham radio signal because of their own broadband over powerline signal polution, then it is a serious problem. And quite simply, there are already laws against it. Hams, other people, and other industries have to follow the regulations against such interfearing radio signals, I so no reason why the power industry should not have to also.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Instead of hampering hams with BPL, why not encourage and support IPoHR (IP over ham radio?). I'd bet with enough tweaking, modulation schemes could provide fairly decent bandwidth to rural areas via ham, which could be wire-distibuted locally. Even better, get some folks to setup 'time share' systems.
Let's get the hams involved, and provide incentive to 'make it work', which they already have a history of doing. I'd betcha there is more than one ham-fisted-geek out there who wants to build a ham-IP gateway.
I recall reading something about this in the dim, dark, past...but I'm too lazy to google it.
Emergencies do not necessarily mean there is a power outage.
Suppose the phones go down. This happened in an area where I was living when someone cut the sole long distance line in the region. Hospitals could not communicate, and family members could not check on the status of their loved ones. Hams like me carried the messages.
Emergency to a ham doesn't necessarily mean disaster, it means any situation where the normal lines of communications are disrupted.
Examples of times where Hams are used for communications even when the phone lines are up, and the power is up:
- Coordinating evacuations (fire, etc). You coordinate the evacuation of thousands with the phone system or the internet... let me know how it goes.
- Car accident in the middle of nowhere.
- Search and rescue efforts. Clicking and talking on a multi-access channel works a lot better than cell phones.
There are also communities where it is a primary method of communication. There is a place called Three Rivers here in Oregon, near Lake Billy Chinook. They do not have power, they do not have phones, matter of fact, they don't have any public utilities. There's several hundred homes, each with solar and wind power, and wells or trucked water. Some cellphone coverage is available, but not much. *Everyone* has a CB or ham radio.
"Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives" should be a convenience store, not a government agency.
Huh. In France, they've got powerline broadband and I haven't heard of problems. Probably in other EU countries, as well. Is this foot-stamping on the part of FEMA? Is there really no way to work it out? Maybe not... I'm just bitter about paying $40/mo for a 2Mb/512Kb connection.
Understand the comments however, think that they are being pushed by the old guard, note used to be into Amatuer Radio at High School, know Valve Theory@#$%@#, but the reality is that in many places there is no network other than a power grid, the development of PLC is going to be very important for the global rollout of broadband. About 14% have telephony but about 40% have power. RF issues are being dealt with, and even in the USA with great Broadband optiosn, many regions will only have a powernetwork for potential broadband, which I see as another long haul alternative, rather than trying to lay fibre, which is not econmically viable in many areas, of low population density.
It's an electrical signal.A weak one too.
If you don't like what I write don't be a CS and mod it down. Refute it.
Yea I can't spell. So what is your point?
Hmmm, from my MU* and IRC experience, that stands for "For No Apparent Reason". Sneaky!
They could have gone for a Pinky and the Brain angle though, and just called it "NARF".
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
IMHO, someone better EOL this BPL idea PDQ before FEMA gets PO'ed. OTOH, if this could somehow work in GNU or dare I say BSD as well as MS PCs, despite the dangers to FNARS, lets give it a try. Sure beats DSL to speed those TCP/IP connections.
today is spelling optional day.
FEMA has a point, though. They've put in a nationwide HF network for emergencies that can stay up even if other communication systems go down. So if somebody does bring down the phone system, they have backup. Someday we might really need that.
One might add, this doesn't apply only to hams.
Imagine that FEMA is unable to test their equipment or run practice/training drills when there's no emergency.
What are the chances there will be undiagnosed equipment problems? Operators who aren't familiar with the gear? Operators who aren't familiar with proper operating procedure? (locations where they can't hear anything because there's some other interference source that had been buried under the BPL noise?)
Alternatively, do you want to have a broadband provider that stops working for a few hours a week so FEMA can run drills? (then add in the Army, the FAA, the Navy, CIA,...)
And not just cordless phones either. Baby monitors and other non-licensed equipment at 49 MHz will be toast. Certainly HF radio will get clobbered by BPL, but VHF-Lo will become unusable, as you'll see below.
s t/2003-08/msg00562.html to get an idea of what this is all about.
BPL is touted as the saviour for rural residents away from cable and DSL service, right? Hope you enjoy your nice fast broadband when your house is on fire and your kids are trapped upstairs, because guess what, bunky? *MOST RURAL FIRE DEPARTMENT RADIOS ARE VHF-Lo Band* -- between 30 and 50 MHz -- since that band has much better range than VHF-Hi, UHF and 800+ over flat country. Ditto for the volunteer rescue squad and sheriff's office in Podunk County...better start IMing them for help and directions when the burglars drop by for tea, since their squad-car radios won't pick up a blasted thing as they travel on the county roads underneath all those Porn-Packed Power Lines!
Maybe you can forget about all this nonsense and just watch a little TV? Oh, I almost forgot. If you've got an outside antenna to receive local broadcast television, you can almost write off channels 2 - 6, which operate between 54 and 88 MHz, unless you're almost right under the transmitter. Don't worry about watching the weather warnings on Channel 3 a few towns away, your weather radio will warn you of the twister heading for community -- unless a nice second harmonic is creating a strong enough local signal in your house to blot out the 162 MHz band (81 x 2 = 162 MHz, where weather radios operate). Mightn't radiate very far, but it could pack just enough of a wallop to cause your WX radio to fail as that F5 bears down on you knobby little body.
And better get some more homeowners' insurance if you live near a major airport cuz one of the ILS approach nav-aid beacons ("fan marker") sits smack-dab at 75 MHz. Not to mention the possibility of radio-controlled model airplanes losing contact with their control box and going awry when junior is flying them in the park near home -- they're also around 72 and 75 MHz.
This is NOT your average FUD. This is very real, and I've heard/seen what this can do in Briarcliff Manor, a small test market north of New York City. Please wander over to http://www.ac6rm.net/mailarchive/html/elecraft-li
Cheers, Peter, W2IRT