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Could Broadband Over Power Lines be Dangerous?
falconfighter writes " Broadband over Powerlines, once touted as the solution to many internet problems (developing 3rd world countries, etc.) has a new hazard. The system basically involves putting high amounts of modulated RF on a power line. The Amateur Radio Relay League has the most informative page on the topic.
The hazards include exceeding MPE (maximum permissable exposure), RF burns, and disrupting the HF bands of radio. This last one would also work in reverse, meaning hams, airplanes, or the military keying up their radios could take out large areas of internet service (with airplanes, potentially over several hundred miles)."
Being near a hot unshielded antenna lead of sufficient power output is bad news...
ARRL, prepare to be /.'ed
They probably aren't used to the /. level of bandwidth. They're nice people. Be nice to their server :)
"Give a man a fire, he's warm for a day, set a man on fire, he's warm for life."
How can broadband over powerlines be a solution for the 3rd world? Surely you need most people connected to mains power first!
Oh great, now a slashdotting will take out all the power and aircraft in a hundred mile radius
I am one of many. My idea is not unique, nor do I expect my voice alone to sway you. I speak in a chorus of opinion.
Do note that the problems of interference goes both ways: broadband over powerlines will jam HF communications (including emergency services some places). But at the same time a HF jammer or a HF over-the-horizon radar will jam broadband over powerlines.
HF being global means a jammer in the Pacific can take out broadband in Europe.
...well, mostly. The hazards of RF exposure are controversial at best, with widely varying opinions in the medical community and no real, controlled studies. It's pretty certain, though, that at the low HF frequencies that the BPL folks are proposing, the effects of exposures to a few watts are pretty minimal.
This doesn't mean that BPL is a good idea. As the ARRL (which stands for American Radio Relay League) correctly points out - and has been covered on Slashdot before - BPL is a disaster for HF radio communications. Government agencies are weighing in strongly against it. I doubt it'll see the light of day in widespread use in the US.
Disinfect the GNU General Public Virus!
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 don't wait to do anything until a true emergency happens...
>>esr>>
Seems to be Slashdotted already, even though I'm seeing 0 comments @ -1...
Then again, I didn't think anyone really believed this, did they? I mean, any first-year EE student can tell you that mains cable is no good for signalling on, even at modest frequencies. Bah.
These sigs are more interesting tha
Having an amateur radio antenna is like a lightning rod for neighborhood electronics problems. I've not transmitted for a couple of years now, but that has not stopped neighbors from blaming me for every glitch that occurs with their electronics. I can imagine what will happen if I key up my transmitter and disrupt every internet connection for a couple of miles....
Oh goody so now the power companies will have even more control as they blat out most LF/HF wireless within a certain distance of their transmission lines (or should that be antena lines now?)...
Not to mention won't people who choose not to receive broadband via power still be able to tap into the transmission signal and so monitor other peoples traffic easier than trying to splice into the fiber backbone (oh hang on.... wonder if the gov't might not be keen for this very reason)...
--- Users are like bacteria -> Each one causing a thousand tiny crises until the host finally gives up and dies.
What HAMs are their in Haiti? Would the downtime justify fiber optic wires throughout the country? Now in America... we have no excuse to not use fiber optic. Especially since there is so much unused in the ground.
I don't even want to -think- about what happens when the vacuum cleaner gets switched on!
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. --Edmund Burke
"Let's put something that looks like high-power broadband RF noise on long, unshielded, untwisted power lines, suspended in the air, otherwise known as antennas."
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Yeah, it works. The question is, at what cost?
Do you really know what the amateur radio community does for the public, rtp?
My grandfather was an air-crash investigator, and once investigated a european crash (May have been Switzerland in around 1970, apologies, I don't have any details) in which an airliner had apparently tried to land on the side of a mountain. It was proved that the accident happened due to the local electricity generating grid using high frequency modulation to carry messages over power lines. The chosen frequency was a close enough match to the Instrument Landing System on the aircraft to cause it to engage. I hope modern airliners have better ILS.....
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
Hams are more concerned about the interference issue than the health risks, and rightly so. The potential health hazards created by modulating the power lines should be minimal, assuming the level of modulation is kept reasonably low.
The interference caused to more traditional RF communications is likely to be significant because you are, in effect, stringing miles and miles of antenae across the countryside. The best bet might be to modulate on bands that are presently home to digital communication and in coordination with those present modulation schemes such that they don't interfere with each other.
I suspect the whole issue may be moot, as I doubt that BPL will ever see a largescale rollout for other technical reasons besides these.
That is in South Europe, just in case anyone doesn't know, we have broad-band over many companies, but main power-line distributor, Iberdrola, is now starting to offer this service with lower prices than other operators. I was thinking to switch to them since they offer lower prices and better service, and they have even run a test program over a few months in the city of Zaragoza and near country area with no known problems, I'm surprised to see that news here.
DON'T PANIC
Imagine being fried by a stray IP packet
If I seem short sighted, it is because I stand on the shoulders of midgets
I know most of the big cities have their power lines underground (at least mine did). The broadband company took it to their challenge to even put the broadband cables underground. I guess that could provide sufficient shield along with the shielding on the cable itself. Now the question is cost of doing this over the entire country, which I have no clue. Again I am just curious as to how will these two cable interact because it is failing my general electromagnetic knowledge.
And quite dangerous.
I mean, really, who expects this to work
Yes, it's great policy to make people who buy their own equipment, pay for their own training, pay for their licenses, and must agree to use their own time and own private equipment for public service when necessary go out and pay for new training, new licenses, and new equipment just to keep the privileges they now have.
Ever see those medicine commercials where the human body is struck by lightning.
Now, a different wave of support questions.
Support Monkey: Sir, do you see lighting like things on your computer? Sir... Sir...
(To his colleague monkey) Looks like he hung up
Free XBox, PS2
The idea of transferring data over power lines has been suggested before... but at least in the case reported in wired of Nov. 2001, it didn't work--despite what everone wanted to believe.
the article.
...and is a threat to their broadband over oil pipeline plans.
The print version of Nexus Magazine http://www.nexusmagazine.com/ had a story on micrwaves in the power lines. It's not pretty.
Astro
The whole idea of broadband over power lines is an interesting science experiment and shouldn't be implemented commercially.
Will someone finally shoot this horse?
What some power companies here (norway) have done is to use a special kind of machine (it looks like a really clever invention) that "spins" fibre optic cable(s) around high voltage power lines. This doesn't work for buried power cables, ofcourse. This technique gives several advantages: Cheap, the cost is the cable and a helicopter, no digging, no new cable masts, no buying right of way. Security (I'd think twice before trying to mess with a cable wrapped around a high voltage line :D ). And since light won't be disturbed by the magnetic fields generated by the current there is no need to worry about power and data interfering with each other
- We are the slashdot. Resistance is futile. Prepare to be moderated -
would have had to be switched on by the pilots.
This story doesn't pass the smell test, or would you have us believe that planes run the risk of their instrument landing systems just "switching on" and attempting to land the plane automatically every time they pass an airport with ILS aids?
The reason is that we take care of the community in case of emergencies. In most cases, if something happens, hams are on the scene within 5 mins. We can relay messages in virtually no time (provided there's no other way to communicate) and basically are just there in emergencies.
"Give a man a fire, he's warm for a day, set a man on fire, he's warm for life."
There's isn't a biological threat from BPL, but the interference issues are very real.
Here's a BPL and Amateur Radio FAQ.
Tired of being "punished" by the Slashdot $rtbl since 2002. I'm now over at http://soylentnews.org/ .
I wish we would stop throwing all sorts of half-assed technologies at the problem. Simply dig a hole, put some fiber in it and drown people with bandwidth. Yeah, it's going to cost more and it'll take longer, but it will also LAST us longer. I am typing this on a collaboratively installed 100 MBit/s ethernet which is attached to other similar networks via a city-wide gigabit backbone. We did a lot of digging and paid thousands, but it was so worth it.
We really don't lack for communications infastructure. Between our huge telephone and cable networks, and growing amount of fibre thereof, we are doing fine. The majority of the problem with getting broadband to end users comes from stupidity and/or anti-competitive behaviour on the part of cable and phone companies, not lack of infastructure to carry the data. Maybe in developing nations there is more benefit, but I kind of doubt it.
The hazards include exceeding MPE (maximum permissable exposure), RF burns, and disrupting the HF bands of radio.
Um, you just made that up didn't you? I have never seen anyone, including W1RFI (Ed Hare), state that there was any type of RF hazard from BPL. It does pose a serious interference problem for anyone using HF, but not a health risk.
--fatboy
The hazards of RF exposure are still being debated. Hazards from BPL would need years of study. That being said people are probably at more risk from intentional radiators like WiFi points. This is due to the way the body absorbs RF. The absorbtion is a function of the wavelength of the RF and the size of the human body. I don't remember the exact data but the shorter the wavelength the better the absorbtion. This does have some exceptions but I do remember a strong absorbtion around the 1Ghz range.
The interference problem is the greater of the two. Yes it will interfere with radio communications but the interference will be worse for BPL. Aircraft have the potential to cause interference over a wide area due to their altitude, but the tranmitter is relatively low power. The real problems will start when a ham operator can't talk to his buddy 20 miles away. They get tired of the interference so they kick in the linear amplifiers. Since the max leagal power for most of the bands is 1500 watts they have the potential to take out BPL in a very large area.
Karma: Positive. Mostly affected by the lack of a karma joke in your sig.
Yeah, that pretty much seems to be what you use Slashdot for, Demetriutitus.
Hams are "set against this PLC thingie" because it would basically wipe out our service. The ARRL has fought encroachment onto our allocationtions for seventy-five years, and rightly so: ham radio trains young people in electronics and provides a free, emergency communications service that works even when "the grid is down." Ironically, my first exposure to IRC was on a ham TCP/IP packet network.
As far as "no clear TV or radio signal for you" goes, interference cases almost always trace back to poor shielding on consumer electronics devices, not dirty ham transmitters. If your TV can't deal with 1500 watts next door, I'm sure your local ham would be glad to put a passband on it. Which, as a result of ham radio, he knows how to do.
KB3CAX
someone smarter than me might be able to figure out how to modulate rf over powerlines, whether for broadband purposes or not, to cause death and destruction in strange new ways
just by thinking this, is ashcroft going to knock on my door now?
seriously though, am i way off base or are their novel and creative ways to use power lines to do weird rf resonance things that might be analogous to that cliche of an opera star exploding a crystal glass with her voice? would it be easy?
please forgive my ignorance if i sound silly
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Here in the New York area, the power company (Con Edison) has a broadband network. You know how they did it?
They used the fact that they already own the poles, to string up their own fiber optic cable.
This, to me, is the primary indication that broadband over power lines just isn't going to happen. When even the power company doesn't believe in it, you know it's a dud.
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
sounds like another "i don't want to leave
...
my house and get my hands dirty putting cable
in the ground, but just wanna plug a "new
device thingy(tm)" into elec. wall outlet.
burying cables is !F!U!N!
"what's the hangup gentelmen?"
ah! i see we're running outta copper and phyber!
that must be the problem!
acctually all this data over elec. grid is just
super lame.
anyway IF you should decide to go with phyber
do give me a call. i'll bring my own shovel.
you just provide the beer and the sandwiches. i
even got my own tent!
Am I right in gathering that the systems described here use high power HF on powerlines to distribute over much longer distances than this?
Oxford Dictionaries Online
...of an RF burn from a MRI machine:- 9/images/rf-burn.jpg
http://www.cis.rit.edu/htbooks/mri/chap
doubt a powerline would be this bad, but I really am not certain.
Natural-Selection Be
while they were navigating around a mountain, not trying to land?
His story makes no sense at all, in any capacity, and a search of crashdatabase.com finds no crash matching any of the "Facts" of his poorly remembered, almost assuredly appocryphal story more than 30 years old.
Here in the mid-atlantic region, AEP has most of their power grid strung with fiber alongside the power lines. I have a friend who works in a local office and he used to amaze me with the bandwith of their network. AEP uses the fiber for their company data and voice networks as well as leasing the lines out.
This article misstates key facts about PLC. Most importantly, it does not use high levels of RF power. It uses milliwatts of power spread over 2-30 MHz band. ARRL transmitters pose a far greater health risk (if any) when they radiate 10 to 1000 watts of power. Commercial broadcasters routinely transmit 10's to 100's of *kilo*watts and they are not considered enough of a health hazard to prevent them from operating. Let's put this one in perspective.
Wouldn't it be a mute point if Verizon and others successfully roll out 3g and users had THAT as an option... their speeds should be 500-800kbps...
sure it's not DSL or Cable speed, but it would be far greater than POTS.
Getting good coverage would be the problem, though. Maybe it would spark (no pun intended) a revolution in home wireless 3g antennas?!
Sounds like a file sharing organization! How could they be against any kind of broadband! ;-)
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
Seriously - I don't see this working in places like the Dominican Republic where people tap into the power mains, and the government performs rotating blackouts to nail those guys...
Personally, I think simple repeater X.25 stations set up everywhere with wireless links everywhere is still the best bet for such conditions.
Does anyone know if the same basic principles used in transmission of broadband over powerlines are employed in those LANs you can connect to any power outlet?
You do anything to your home grid serious enough to pose an RF risk to humans, and you'll blow the hell out of your breaker box.
Come on. Next cell phones really do cause cancer, I bet.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
Kids, HomePlug is BPL and has been around for quite some time (Linksys and others will happily sell you a box). No one has died from HomePlug and the world has not stopped. Even chicken little still sleeps at night. See the FUD for what it is and move on. There is no spectacle to marvel here.
-Licensed Ham Radio operator & ARRL Member
More voltage means more bandwidth!
Let me just up the wattage a little bit more!
Ahh! Ahh!
(Slump)
Considering that they have yet to get power to so many of these areas, wouldn't it be wise to run fiber optic at the same time as they run new powerlines?
Oh, how Insightful. I mean, when wiring the third world, obviously money is no problem!
Reality check -- the reason why this is suggested as a solution for the third world is that all they have to do is just run the power cables instead of running the power cables and some other cabling system for phone, TV, and internet. We are talking about people who current can't even afford to run the power cables, much less fiber optic cables too.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
i read a review in a magazine about ethernet through the powerlines in ones house, that i could see as an practical application, not over the general powerlines, though some local power companies here in Denmark has and still are testing BPL
*resistance is futile, or fuzzy, i dunno*
I have to believe these comments are not from the ARRL. The notion that BPL can cause RF burns is so far from the mark as to be either laughable or libelous. BPL signal injectors output at somewhere between 4 and 30 Mhz at something under 250mW. The L33T dude across the street with the FCC-illegal WiFi amplifier and pringles-can antenna are more likely to injure someone! Your cellphone and FRS radio put out much higher power and people carry those in their pants pocket...
At 250mW the signal only travels a few hundred meters on the powerline under ideal conditions - and much less in air.
So concerns are real and the BPL providers will likely encounter instances of problems. But to the utilities this is no larger a problem than interference caused by RF leaks from transformers - which the ARRL *knows* are the single most common source of interference today!
So where is the problem? Lets put our energies into something that matters; like stopping the FCC from continually reallocating ham bands for commercial use!
ps. The ARRL equivalent in Austria is at risk to be sued for putting out false press releases saying the Austrian government has shut down a BPL deployment for noise problems. FUD is a dangerous element - Microsoft not withstanding.
Broadband Over Powerlines?
Broadband Power!
Broadband Over Powerlines hits a Snag
Now I didn't read all of the info on that page... but what happens if you're in a storm prone area and every other week your modem gets zapped? I'm hoping there would be some sort of surge protection. Also i notice that the power simply fluctuates a lot in my house, due to my ups beeping about it every now and then I'd hope that would be accounted for.
Even a stopped clock gives the right time twice a day.
I'm not quite so ready to believe the health-realated concerns, but the interference problems that will result from an implementation of BPL are very real. I've seen a demonstration of BPL's interference at a local hamfest here in the Washington, DC area (For those interested, AMRAD will also be giving a presentation at the DC area Winterfest hamfest in February). BPL makes a lot of noise on an HF receiver, across the entire tuning range! But what is potentially even worse is that a relatively small amount of power (I believe they gave the example of 10 watts into a dipole at reasonable proximity) is enough to cause a link to fail.
Undoubtedly, a ham radio operator's neighbors, and perhaps the power company, will put a lot of pressure on him to cease operating a ham radio. This is totally backwards! Let's revisit the Part 15 rules for a minute - the regulations that apply to unlicensed services, including BPL. It says that an unlicensed device MAY NOT cause harmful interference to a licensed service but an unlicensed device must accept any harmful interference received.
This basically means that the burden for resolving any interference problem is on the head of the unlicensed service, in this case, the power company - at least in theory. I have a hard time believing it will play out this way though. In fact, when the FCC asked for comments on a notice of inquiry with regards to relaxing part 15 standards, many power companies claimed that NO INTERFERENCE PROBLEM EXISTS, and it is up to other users to PROOVE it, before they should be required to act on it. This is a total reversal of the roles established by Part 15! And that is leaving aside the fact that there are several studies done by hams, including a very good one from AMRAD, that do proove, both empiracally and mathematically, the interference threat. BPL promoters, including the heads at the FCC, have turned a blind eye.
HF radio is used to provide long-distance communications during disasters by many groups, including ham radio organizations, and FEMA. (FEMA has recently weighed in on the debate) It also carries shortwave broadcast from other countries, which would be sqaushed by interference.
It does not make sense that the FCC should allow an unlicensed user to render this huge chunk of spectrum totally useless to it's intended users. It's selfish and shortsighted.
Please write your congressperson. Make them aware of the problems BPL could bring.
So you're downloading the latest Britney Spears album with your power line boardband connection and the RIAA decides to stop you.
So what would happen if one tried to (D)DOS SCO? Would it fry them into oblivion so they can go to Hell to sue Satan for using the letter "S"?
Founder of Mirror Moon - Tsukihime Game Trans
Luke Stewart was a snakeoil salesman. Nobody ever saw a working model. He had all the buzzwords: quantum switch, magnetron, laser... A Dallas TV station tracked Stewart to an apartment in North Dallas. He had no comment.
The only thing new in this world is the history that you don't know.[Harry Truman]
there was an emergency training in Linz/Austria.
The training was designed to simulate an major accident (if I remember it correct, it was an explosion of a chemical plant) and to practice the coordination of firefighters, the Red Cross, the police and several other organisations.
Linz, wich has some 18,000 households, is "Austrias powerline city", wich means, it has about 900 working powerline installations.
But these 900 installed plc units were enough to completly suppress the radio units used by some of the participants (e.g. the Red Cross).
These teams had to abandon the training, since communication was near impossible!
Imagine an real accident: No Red Cross or other ambulance teams! (In Austria, the Red Cross still has the major peace of the ambulance-business-pie).
Id rather get hurt on the countryside!
The checkbox said "Requires Windows 98, NT, or better. And so I installed Linux
The problem is that as a rough approximation, any wire a quarter wavelength or longer can be an effective antenna. In the HF band (3-30 MHz), that's anywhere from 25 meters down to 2.5 meters. It doesn't take a very long wire to be an effective radiator, plus you also have to consider the length of the electrical wiring inside the structure.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Telepolis article (german only, may the fish be with you)
Denken hilft.
This is all about money, windfall money, for power companies. Although I have a ham license, I am inactive in the ham bands. HOWEVER, I am active in MARS and CAP communications on the HF bands and we will lose our emergency network if BPL is adopted. Or does your "right" to cheap broadband overshadow all the established emergency long distance communications networks? That would be very, very shortsighted.
But if there is some sort of problem with broadband-over-powerline systems deployed in third-world countries and people started dying (even if indirectly, like interference prevented radio-requested aid from ariving), the conspiracy theorists would never be silenced. So I would say for the sake of any country's image that they make sure there are not harmful side effects of broadband-over-powerlines
True story.
Community Broadband Networks blog tracks powerline broadband news and issues (also fiber to the home):
Community Broadband Networks
So far there have been about 100 power line broadband posts over the last year; you can use the built-in search function to find them. A.B.
Al Bonnyman
Community Broadband Networks
NGO = Non-Governmental Organization.
The logical conclusion from your post is that all Organizations should be Governmental.
My church is a Non-Governmental Organization.
So is the company who happens to pay my bills.
Obviously, you must live in a country where private ownership of property has been abolished, and you like it there.
The Web is like Usenet, but
the elephants are untrained.
This last one would also work in reverse, meaning hams, airplanes, or the military keying up their radios could take out large areas of internet service (with airplanes, potentially over several hundred miles).
...but we get faster internet, right? :)
http://oldcrows.net/~oldcrow/Lugo_SWR.mpg
I've pointed this out in the past (it seems obvious). Also, the X10 stuff is probably an issue. I've had guys who monitor RF fields for a living tell me that X10 and alarm stuff is a lot worse than the nearby powerlines, because it's of the power levels and the fact that it's not a static field.
And god forbid we get into wireless, where the power output is worse than the Federal standards for emissions by microwave ovens (by about 100 times IIRC).
And no one has done any safety studies on this stuff. The closest is cellular; and those studies have raised questions.
People want their technology. They don't care about the consequences. Personally, I view it as Darwinian selection in action
The FCC has limits to human exposure to RF energy, but broadband over power line that operates at the FCC limits of 30 uV/m at 30 meters distance cannot, under any circumstances, exceed those RF safety standards. On 30-300 MHz, the part of the spectrum with the most stringent exposure limits, the exposure level is at about 27.5 volts/meter -- a level about 120 dB higher than the levels permitted by Part 15 to unlicensed emitters such as BPL. Expressed in power, the BPL systems are permitted to operate at a level that is 1/1,000,000,000,000 of the FCC's exposure standards. The risk to broadband over power lines is that the levels are strong enough to cause harmful interfernce. As a secondary issue, at least one system has been demonstrated to be susceptible to interference from amateur radio and presumably other HF operation. The RF levels of BPL systems are, however, nowhere near the levels that could exceed the RF-exposure limits. Ed Hare, W1RFI@arrl.org
The Amateur Radio Relay League
The A in ARRL stands for American.
~Jaeson
Con Ed's fiber network is huge. (Many of the pictures of high voltage fiber systems on my employer's web site are of Con Ed lines in Westchester County). Con Ed serves 1000s of businesses in the NYC area with high speed fiber services.
Con Ed Communications' "What's Happening" web page gives a sense of the scope of their business
Con Ed also has a small BPL (broadband over power line) trial in northern Westchester County.
A.B.
Al Bonnyman
Community Broadband Networks
Well some power companies obviously do believe and have already been deploying it under the FCC experimental licenses. I do know firsthand that PPL in Pennsylvania has rolled it out in beta form to hundreds of customers in the past year or so. Since they're not generally in the helldesk biz, they've contracted out support to a certain regional ISP where I work. Our dialup support team provides the support and, from what they tell me, it actually does work. Posting AC here for NDA purposes :-)
Piping RF onto the power transmission lines is a hair-brained idea put forth by the same crowd that brought us power brokering. Oh boy, that sure has been a panacea. Not! The Hams are up in arms for good reason. If this is deployed, we'll have lots of long wire antennas bristling with hash. Why is the FCC even considering such a cockamaimy notion? Michael Powell
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
Brings a new meaning to the Ping of Death, too.
I live in Manassas, VA and the city gov't has some lash-up with some company (prospect st. I think) to deliver this service. Out of curiosity I filled out an interest form a month ago and haven't heard back. I know they had announced general availability on Jan 1 but nobody I talk to has actually seen it installed beyond the small pilot test they did. I'm pretty sure it won't go anywhere but figured I would keep my options open.
HAM radio operators have a vested interest in opposing the use of broadband over power lines because the RF interference screws up their sets.
So, they are going to do anything they can to fight this, tooth and nail, and if it means using Photoshop to conjure up a broadband over powerline baby with 18 twisted limbs, they probably would. Not that I would blame them for doing so, as I'm not really sure I like the idea myself.
This is my sig.
Being a licensed ham and a member of the ARRL, I think that the folks on here naysaying the hazardous potential of BPL are really missing the point. The hazard is not necessarily the admittedly low potential for dangerous RF exposure. Milliwats of any RF is unlikely to do damage, when you consider that the cell phone most of you carry in your pocket daily puts out nearly a half watt of energy at much more (potentially) dangerous microwave frequencies. The hazard in BPL is the (proven) much higher potential for interference to emergency communications, such as ham radio, military, aircraft, and government. So why not just lay cheap fiber optic, where the potential for interference is zero? Perhaps the power companies need to stop begging the FCC to give them a Part 15 exemption and spend a little less money on lawyers and worthless research and a little more on safer, more reliable media for Internet access.
There's an old saying that says pretty much whatever you want it to.
No matter where in the world you go, BPL/PLC is trouble: The URE (Spain's ARRL equivalent) has documented interferece in Zaragoza - they have a rather pathectic web site with no functional content - one can find it by googling - but I quote the PDF document at http://www.darc.de/referate/ausland/iaru/eurocom/e uronews1103.pdf,
"About PLC, a strong movement against it has been started in Spain, led by the Union de
Radioaficionados de Espana (URE).
Accurate measurements done in Zaragoza have demonstrated the high level of interference
(around -61 dBm), masking practically most ham signals in the 30, 20 and 15 meter bands.
Consequently, the URE delegate in Zaragoza has prepared a complaint, accompanied by a
detailed technical report showing the interference levels measured at several places in the
city.
"This complaint -the first one in Spain- will be submitted tomorrow [ 29.10.2003 - wsanders ] to the Inspeccion de Telecomunicaciones of Zaragoza."
I'm a Ham for whom even non-PLC interference from arcing power lines is a continuing problem. I don't think the power companies, at least in my area, are sufficiently staffed to roll this out - or do you want your average-Joe cable installer messing with 19 kV transmission lines? Fortunately the technology seems to have a short lifetime; it will soon be surpassed by effective fixed wireless services; the final nail in PLC's coffin may be recent objections from the Department of Homeland Security.
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
Better wrap your house in tinfoil, just in case.
Plus at least some of the proposed systems use frequencies all the way up to 80 MHz. All of a sudden a quarter wave is less than a meter. Clearly a disaster waiting to happen. (And I doubt we'd need to wait for very long, either.)
And, as has been pointed out, the interference potential goes both ways.
Been modded interesting, insightful and funny. Why does real life have to be so different?
Okay, so there might be some interferance to ham radio or other radio sources. Sure, we would have to make sure that emergency radio services if affected were moved. Other than this so what?
Which is more important the 10,000 people who want to use ham radio to talk with truckers in wisconsin or highspeed access to the worldwide network? Protecting Ham Radio for interference is like holding up progress for the people who still watch black and white TVs.
Nearly everyone is connected to the internet now. We have portable internet devices that could be lugged around instead of Ham Radio. If people are really that nostalgic for radio I'm sure someone could put together an IRC type app for voice communication with simulated static etc.. etc..
I can't believe we would hold up such an important service for millions for a few hobbyists!
If you liked this thought maybe you would find my blog nice too:
I heard about possibility of having optical cable a part of the power lines.
This way the signal power losses would be minimal and Elecro-Magnetic emissions would be low.
You could always replace the power lines with shielded versions, but this is costly and probably prohibitively so.
I thought that it was bad enough that line noise keeps the power from arriving at my house with a steady 60Hz sine wave, so if we introduce purposeful signal degradation into the power, will that cause more problems? Many a cheap power supply or motherboard has been fried by voltage spikes, but with this, some kid's Kazaa download could potantially do it? I dunno...
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
And you thought the big blackout was caused by a power plant in Ohio!
But not just that, a whopping 3 moderators also didn't even read the summary!
"This last one would also work in reverse, meaning hams, airplanes, or the military keying up their radios could take out large areas of internet service (with airplanes, potentially over several hundred miles)."
No planes dropping from the sky, just no internet service if you live near a radio wave source because of interference!
Really, how do you people use a browser if you can't read?
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Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
Not Amateur.
Http://www.arrl.org
As you say "The FCC has limits to human exposure to RF energy". Your implication there is that these limits are indeed safe.
Now I am not saying it is NOT safe, but I certainly would not flatly assert that either PBL or the FCC regs are safe.
I have been watching with interest a number of RF experiments that investigate the effects of ELF, HF, non-globular cell orientation, corona effects etc. The results have been extremely variable and rarely if ever seem to mesh with accepted "standards" - Hence I would err on the side of conservatism at this juncture.
Of course you are 100% correct when it comes to interference - no surpises there though. :)
Q.
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I've spent lots of my life removed from the city, and I can feel electricity. I don't know the exact effect on health, but it is stressful. There's always a humming even if you turn off all the lights.
I have always believed that being around so much electricity has to be bad for you. I think if you leave out all theological discussion, it's pretty indisputable that we all have an electromagnetic field that is essential to our lives. So who knows what being around such strong fields 24/7 does to you.
Please stop stalking me, bro.
The way I understand it, this problem isn't a concern now. Now they're prototyping composite cored aluminum powerline which carries an optical signal through the composite core, uninterrupted by the electrical currents on the outer aluminum sheath. It's not so much "broadband over powerlines" as "powerlines over broadband" (har, har) but the end effect is the same: internet wherever you have power--what more could you ever ask for, really, besides power and internet? ;)
Reinvent the wheel only at either a lower cost, greater effectiveness, or your own personal enrichment and satisfaction.
Yes, but mostly to investors.